Since the dramatic and unprecedented advances in production and manufacturing of the Industrial Revolution from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, humans have been digging up coal, oil and gas for energy.

Except for the introduction of nuclear power based on uranium in the 1950s and 60s, nothing has changed. Today, coal, oil and gas remain the primary sources of energy, fueling human activities around the world.

But the recent and rapid decline in prices of alternative energy sources like wind and solar, and the plunging cost to store them presage a very different future on the horizon – one in which fossil fuels go the way of the dinosaurs, and where in the next 10 years we will see more changes to the energy industry than we have seen in the past 100.

To begin, America only recently achieved its position as the largest producer of oil and gas; a rise made possible by hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking.