While fossil energy dependency has declined and energy supply has grown in the postwar world economy, future resource scarcity could cast its shadow on world economic growth soon if energy markets are forward looking. We develop an endogenous growth model that reconciles the current aggregate trends in energy use and productivity growth with the intertemporal dynamics of forward looking resource markets. Combining scarcity-rent driven energy supply (in the spirit of Hotelling) with profit-driven Directed Technical Change (in the spirit of Romer/Acemoglu), we generate transitional dynamics that can be qualitatively calibrated to current trends. The long-run properties of the model are studied to examine whether current trends are sustainable. We highlight the role of extraction costs in mining. •Analytical growth model with directed technical change and endogenous energy supply from non-renewable resources.•Qualitative calibration to data second half 20th century: bounds for parameters are identified.•Energy dependence, as measured by energy share in GDP, first declines and then rises.•The exhaustion of efficiency improvements in resource extraction slows down growth.