Part of the incoming solar energy becomes stored in fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal: Figure 1.7). To understand why fossil fuels exist you need first to know where the major stores of carbon are on the planet and how, through organic activity, this carbon becomes fixed in rocks and thus liable to be stored for geologically long periods.
OpenLearn - Energy resources: An introduction to energy resources Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.