That is so not true, over 70 % of all electricity in Europe is being produced by thermal power plants which burn either coal or natural gases. There resources are just as limited as oil, plus at least coal power plants are more harmful to the environment because of sulfur dioxide. People for some reason are very afraid of nuclear energy and at least Germany is planning to shut down all their "AKW's" by 2022. Renewable power sources are nothing but a joke, geothermal, wind and water power stations cannot be build everywhere and the power they produce is rather negligible. Solar energy has a potential, but science will have to go a looong way before we can use it with reasonable efficiency.
There were no steam powered cars in mass production. The era of automobilism kind of started with development of internal combustion engine. Ethanol seems like quite reasonable alternative fuel for the next decades. We can produce almost arbitrary amount of it, it doesn't really pollute environment and it's very cheap.
