Look up the bond energies for these bond types. Add up all of the bonds broken. Add up all of the bonds created. The total energy change will be the sum of these two numbers. We say that they are kinetically slow.
Some energy is sacrificed to produce more energy overall.
The spark plug in your car does this for your gasoline. Reaction rates can be altered in many ways. For example, increasing the surface area of the fuel will help speed up the reaction, increasing the temperature can too. Catalysts also speed up reactions by lowering the activation energy. In a recent advance toward cleaner fuel emisssions, coal is crushed into a fine powder and blown into a stream of air, because the reaction occurs quickly on the high surface area of the coal, the reaction occurs at a lower temperature and less NOx are produced.