Regarding alternitive energies, I'm pretty sure the deal at the moment is that:
Wind Power - Expensive and no one wants them nearby. The majority of suitable locations have already been used, and it makes up less than 10% of the energy produced.
Wave/Tidal power - Already used all possible locations, makes up about 5%.
Solar energy - Not very efficient, expensive to set up and impossible to have industrial scale ones.
So basically, those particular methods have been used to or near their maximum, with the current technology available. I'm unsure on how well biofuels rate so I havn't listed them, though from what I gather its only going to make up ~10% energy produced, maximum. Just too labour intensive at the moment, and you need a whole lot of field to make enough power to run a power station for a year...
I personally think the only way is either bite the bullet and go Nuclear (but what will the long term effects of having all the radioactive waste lying about in the future? Who the f**k would want to live next to a nuclear power station? What about events such as Chernobyl? These all need to be figured out) or something ground breaking needs to be discovered.