Exhaustion of non-renewable natural resources: a real threat for the 21st century?

The goal of the thesis is to examine the issue of non-renewable resources and analyse the rarity of resources in the future, to assess whether there is a realistic threat of their depletion and what consequences this would have on future economic development. This thesis tries to find out whether the potential threat of resource depletion is real and whether fossil fuels, which are nowadays necessary inputs for economic development, can be completely exhausted. The theoretical part primarily deals with the characteristics of natural resources and their basic distribution. In the next chapters, it is summarized the findings of other authors who had done research already on this topic and their conclusions are the base for working with current data. In the final line, it points out how the issue becomes a topic even in the lay public and can potentially influence political thinking as well. The practical part focuses specifically on crude oil, natural gas and coal. This thesis primarily works with available data from 2001 to 2021. It compares the available amount in 2021 as well as how the size of reserves has evolved over the past 21 years. An important variable is also the growing consumption, which affects the final amount in the reserves. The practical part also covers progression of price of the resources, which, however, turned out not to be dependent on the size of the bearings. Each chapter devoted to individual commodity is rounded off with a view into the future years. The outlook is based on a comparison of the amount of resources and their consumption and it is calculated whether and when there is a realistic threat that the given energy resource will be completely exhausted. The results for all three investigated sources are not identical, in all cases they tend to conclude that complete depletion is not entirely realistic.