Energy runs our society, our very way of life. Unfortunately, raw energy alone isn't enough. Merely expending raw energy results only in destruction. In order for raw energy to be used effectively, it must create productive motion. Productive motion occurs when you take an energy source like coal, oil, or sunlight, and create motion to be used for a specific purpose. Electricity as a concept is so valuable because it can travel over long distances with relatively little loss, and power so many different devices, and do it so quickly and so effectively. Without electricity, our motors would simply be used to create brute force, transferable only through the longest feasible piston or directly connected system of energy transfer.
Even with a highly advanced mechanical system of motion, involving gears, cranks, shafts, and levers stretching for miles on end, you could not move energy as efficiently as with electricity, and it would be a lot clunkier. Electricity has the advantage, however, of creating mechanical energy, turning it into electrical energy, and then the electrical energy can be turned back into mechanical energy with an electric motor.
Electricity can be used for running almost everything that powers our society today -- so the question is what WOULD cause an energy crisis? A real energy crisis would definitively ensue if our society was only able to create electricity off of fossil fuels. However, we are very fortunate that electricity can be created a multitude of ways. Mechanical energy can also be created a multitude of ways.
This is another line of thinking as to why there is no energy crisis. If more energy hits the Earth in an hour than the entire planet uses in a year, and if solar panels can turn that light into electricity, and if we can create electrical motors to do mechanical work from electrical energy, we subsequently have more than enough energy hitting the earth in a single day to establish all of our mechanical tasks, including driving a car, running any kind of computer or electronic device, even running heavy equipment. Even if the conversion factor on solar was only 1% efficient (it's not, it's much higher) we would still have far, far more than enough energy than we would need to cover all our energy needs.
In addition to mechanical energy, electricity can also be used to create heat energy. Electricity is the most versatile type of energy that way. Heat energy can be used to heat up water and run a steam engine. People think steam engines are just old Victorian technology. They aren't! We just found more efficient engines that can run off gas. But the point here isn't efficiency, the point is that there's enough net energy to create mechanical, electrical, and heat energy to accomplish any task that we need, or will need. In other words, if we really were running out of oil and fossil fuels, prices for energy might increase as industries adjust to relying more and more on electrical, but there would only be a PRICE increase, and at that, temporarily!
If you've taken some college-level economics, you can prove that it would only be a price increase in terms of supply and demand. Here's how: Energy is probably one of the few commodities with a supply thousands and thousands of times above the demand. And that's just in solar alone! I would defy anyone to find any other industry, from shoelaces, to T-Shirts, or even cheap, imported Chinese novelty items where the supply is so far in excess of the actual demand.
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1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#cite_note-Smil_2006.2C_p._12-8
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