Energy Crisis

The Energy Crisis occurred between -3 PRE to 5 PRE. It was one of the biggest concerns of the time, when all of the current sources of energy were running out, and Lazarus Ore had yet to be discovered.

Causes
The largest single contribution to the energy crisis was the lack of oil. Large portions of the world economy had been run by oil in the century before Frandoria Lazarus discovered his ore. Consumer grade vehicles burned oil derivatives, industry grade vehicles burned different derivatives, but it all came from oil. By -3 PRE, it was, for all intents and purposes, it was used up. Of course, there was still oil; However, it was prohibitively expensive to get. Other sources of energy existed, but proved unable to meet the demand.

Nuclear power was also having problems at this point. Nuclear Fission was outlawed due to its radioactive byproducts. long-term storage facilities of the waste were starting to leak, and the public lost confidence in the safety of such plants. The timing could not have been worse, since without oil and nuclear power, the world's energy supplies were very limited. Fusion power was still a relatively inefficient form of power production, and because of this no one had put forth the resources to build many fusion plants.

Hydro, solar, and wind power still worked, but the infrastructure simply did not exist to support the world's energy demands. Efforts to expand these capabilities ran into numerous setbacks, from environmentalists protesting the building sites, to the lack of energy itself.

Ramifications
The energy crisis sent the world economy into a death spiral. People had problem commuting to their jobs, they did not have enough power to run electronics, they did not even have enough power to light up their houses. Strict energy consumption limitations were enforced. Curfews were instated to limit light use. Industry slowed, unable to fuel itself, and unable to sell its products to an unemployed workforce.

Governments started putting larger percentages of their spending into energy research. However, since the economy crashed, so did the governments budget, and in reality they were spending less on energy research than they had been previously.

Exceptions
Non-earth colonies were never dependent on oil, and had never outlawed nuclear power, and so were largely unaffected. This period gave them a relative advantage over the over-populated earth, and was a large contribution to the Interrupted War. The colonies were able to declare themselves independent of Earth, and Earth did not have the resources free to successfully stop them.

The moon was free of the nuclear ban, and so the ALICE II project was able to proceed normally.

End of the Crisis
The crisis ended in 5 PRE when Frandoria Lazarus discovered Lazarus Ore. This high-energy yield resource was sufficient to get the world economy jump-started. Learning from the incident, Solar, Wind, and Hydro plants were built, removing the dependence on any one resource for all of their energy needs.

Aquil Hakim