The oil companies have done quite a bit of research into economically feasible alternative energy technologies. However, they also exist as enterprises to supply the consumer. This means you. If there doesn't seem to be enough money for R&D, it's because you haven't been willing to pay it so what you want is for your government to confiscate the money from you and do it anyway. However, you want the end product to be much cheaper energy for you in the long run and therein lies our problem: no alternative energy venture has heretofore paid off and become anywhere near as cheap as oil, gas and coal.
Therefore, about all we've been able to do is increase efficiencies. There are all kinds of interesting dynamics that mess with our overall utilization of oil though... take diesel, for instance: Diesel engines are generally more efficient but chemicals in their exhausts are more carcinogenic, too. And, worse, crude oil has a lot more gasoline components in it than the fuel oil distillates from which we get diesel. For instance, we get about 19.5 gallons of gasoline out of a barrel of oil and only about 9.2 gallons of fuel oil (4.1 gallons of jet fuel, too). source
So, let's say we all thumb our noses at BigOil and start driving diesels... what happens? Well, the cost of gasoline goes through the floor and the cost of diesel goes sky high, which leaves the uneducated consumer screaming about BigOil: "THOSE RAT B@STARDS!!!" Who wins? The people driving regular cars. Who loses? The people driving the diesel trucks delivering your groceries to the store.
Listen, forget the animosity towards the various producers of energy... what we all want is "work done". That's what we use energy for--to get work done. And if it comes to pass that the per capita net energy delivered to the consumer (again, this means you) starts declining, then there's your economy tanking right there. There happen to be many concurrent reasons for this very phenomenon occurring as we type. The world's smartest people have been on it like a duck on a junebug for several decades now and still haven't come up with a solution that offsets Jevons paradox. I'm sorry, I wish it were otherwise.
