Fuel is just a name for matter that stores energy. Methanol ultimately produced by the sunlight is fully renewable: it's just recycling atoms from molecule to a

Fuel is just a name for matter that stores energy. Methanol ultimately produced by the sunlight is fully renewable: it's just recycling atoms from molecule to another and burning the produced methanol will eventually recycle them back to square one. The same thing happens with oil too. It's just that the recycling period is so long that a massive portion of the carbon in the cycle effectively ends up stashed away underground, and the overground ecosystem has time to adapt to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. When we talk about carbon emissions we mean drilling oil and digging up coal increase the amount of carbon in the active cycle and decrease the amount stashed. Yet it's the same carbon the planet has always had, but just with different proportions of it in different phases of the cycle.