Call is useless? Coal is cheaper than natural gas - it has by far the highest EROI of any fossil fuel. . There are vast stores of it. The technology for converting coal to electricity is well known and tested. These are the reasons that poor countries are building coal plants as fast as they can afford them. Even green Germany is building coal plants, to back up their unreliable wind power.

There are two problems with coal: CO2 is higher than other fossil fuels, and the stack emissions are more toxic. But coal is not useless, it just has undesirable characteristics.

Nuclear does not require massive amounts of oil per kWh, which is what counts. Nuclear EROI is the same as coal. Hydroelectric is highest, but the resource is very limited.

While "peak oil" (the basis of "every barrel of oil... gets more expensive" has been forecast for decades, but horizontal drilling and fracturing has shattered that - the reserves are vastly larger than ever before, as that technology, colloquially known as fracking, has opened them.

Wind has a high EROI until you take into account the capacity costs, meaning the costs it imposes on the grid for maintaining grid stability (in simple terms: keeping the electricity flowing).