Still a good time to do research on combustions?

[pnptruong]

Hi everyone,
I'm an undergrad student who is looking for different research interests to specialize into get ready for grad school. At my university, there's a well-known professor in the field of computational combustion, and he offered me a research position. I'm not sure if, considering the trend towards sustainable energy, combustion is still a good field to go into.
My bigger question is how long do you think our economy will stick with fossil fuels, and how does the current affect engineers working in fossil fuel based industries?

 

[NobodySpecial]

combustion has been the basis of human life for the last 500,000 years - I wouldn't worry about the next 50!

 

[Airman]

There's so many trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure already in place around the world in combustion and fossil energy sources that any switch to cleaner energy sources will take a long time to make. Besides which, as new technologies overtake old ones the old technologies are usually improved greatly with the competition and will remain alive for some time - an example is that great improvements were made in sails and sailing technology just as engines began to come into play on ships. You don't have anything to worry about, besides the fact that focusing on combustion will not limit you in industry to only combustion.