A tenet of energy thinking in Europe and the US holds that innovation will rescue developed economies from their dependence on fossil energy and should be encouraged to do so. Technology, according to this way of thinking, can yield energy with nearly all the benefits of oil, gas, and coal and fewer of the disadvantages—mainly resource depletion, greenhouse gases, and, in the case of oil, domination of supply by unfriendly regimes.Adherents to this view promise an energy revolution, the broad displacement of hydrocarbon energy with modern fuels that are—well, different and therefore presumably superior, however more costly. The revolution awaits only the application of politic...