THE FIRST RENEWABLE ENERGY ERA

Throughout human history we may identify two major energy eras: the first one dominated by basic unprocessed renewable energy and the second one with dominance by fossil fuels. These two eras were connected by a lengthy transition period. We are now entering another transition period of unknown length to the second, and perhaps final, renewable energy era. The demarcation between these eras at the global level cannot be identified with precision. The evolution of the energy mix is determined by four major factors: demographic dynamics, climatic conditions, industrial structure, and human behavior. These factors differ among various regions of the world, therefore, any global demarcation indicator selected will not apply uniformly to all regions. In this book I have applied the following procedure. For the energy consumption by fuel, I have used the data set developed by Malanima¹ for the period beginning in 1820, but excluded the energy associated with food consumption for two reasons: most of food consumption serves the function of human survival, and Malanima’s data show modest inter-regional variation in per capita food energy, which means that its exclusion will not affect the general conclusions. My marker for the end of an energy era and the beginning of the transition is the onset of a declining trend for the leading energy sources and a positive trend for the alternative fuels. The transition ends and a new era begins when the share of the dominant energy source category falls below fifty percent.

The First Renewable Energy Era

As indicated by table I-1, for most of history human energy needs were met by two renewable energy sources: fuelwood and fodder for working animals. As late as 1820, these two energy sources combined for a share of 92 percent of global energy consumption. With a single exception, Western Europe, the combined share of fuelwood and fodder ranged between 98.6 and 100 percent among the other regions. Western Europe’s share of less than two-thirds reflects the impact of the Industrial Revolution and suggests that in that region the transition to fossil fuels started a few decades earlier. Table I-1 also shows that in pre-industrial societies energy-consumption per capita was low and uniform among regions. With the exception of the “new” continents, it ranged between 9 and 20 GJs per person. The high value for North America indicates the importance of weather conditions for a population living largely in areas with long and frigid winters.        

 

 

Table I-1. Energy Consumption Indicators, 1820 and 1900

Region  1820                                  1900

                               GJ/Person          Share of             GJ/Person       Share of

                 Ren.       Fossil                          Ren.      Fossil

Western Europe            19.7          63.6       36.4            63.1          13.4      86.6

Eastern Europe             15.7          99.2         0.8            26.4          51.6      48.4

North America            112.8          99.0         1.0          150.4          30.7      69.3

Latin America               13.0        100.0          0              14.8          81.7      18.3

Oceania                         27.8        100.0          0              97.6          72.5      27.5

Asia                                9.4           98.6        1.4             10.3          93.6       6.4

Middle East                    9.0         100.0          0                9.4          97.4       2.6

Africa                           15.7         100.0          0              14.8          97.9        2.1

World                            13.0          91.8        8.2             28.8          44.3      55.7

Note: For 1820, renewables include only fuelwood and fodder, and fossil fuels include only coal; for 1890, renewables include also hydro power, and fossil fuels contain also oil and natural gas.

Source: Author’s calculations based on Malanima (2022).      

 

Pre-industrial society was characterized by a variety of unique features. First, it had a low population density. The entire globe housed less than one million people in the 18^th century, about ten percent of its current level. Second, the overwhelming share of this population lived in rural areas. As late as 1800, only 7 percent of the world’s population lived in an urban setting, and cities were small in size by today’s standards. In 1800, the average size of the top 10 most populous cities was 200,000 and only Bejing had a population in excess of 1 million.²

 

For millennia technological change played a minimal role in the demand and supply of energy. Fodder was simply biomass harvested by hand and fuelwood was trees and shrubs also harvested by hand. Fodder and fuelwood were openly visible and their exploitation required no prospecting or exploration. The major technological changes were in the tools use which improved from stone axes to metal axes and saws. Processing of fuelwood into charcoal simply involved a controlled burn and required no special tools. The major technological advances in transportation were the invention of the wheel, its application to simple carts, and the domestication of animals. The entire process of energy production, transformation, and distribution rested literally on the shoulders of man and beast. On the demand side, the major technological advance was the invention of the clay ovens a couple of centuries BCE in Greece, China, and parts of the middle east. These ovens, mainly used for bread making, supplemented the fire pits that had  served to cook food for millennia. Until the early 1700s, when cast iron stoves were invented, technology simply involved improvements in these clay or brick ovens. For home heating, the equivalent of the fire pit was the open fireplace. Inside the house, the open fireplace was also used for cooking. When cast iron stoves were invented in the 1700s, they took over from the open fireplace the dual function of cooking and heating.

Metallurgy was known from ancient times, but all the work associated with it used animate energy, primarily human work. Smelting used charcoal, which was simply a processed form of fuelwood. Similar conclusions apply to building construction. In the pre-industrial age there were two modes of transportation: on land and by water. Most of the land transportation network was in the form of trails for walking, running, and single animals. Wider roads for carts and chariots were limited in extension and difficult to maintain. Neither construction nor land transportation experienced major technical improvements over the centuries. As pointed out by Smil³ , towards the end of the first renewable era even in the more advanced countries of Europe roads were not better than during the latter part of the Roman Empire and the building techniques used in the construction of palaces and churches were not superior to those employed by the architects and masons that built the Athenian Parthenon. Two main types of vessels were used in water transportation: oared ones (powered by human energy and ranging from the canoes of native Americans to large warships) and sailboats (driven by wind power). The former were employed mainly along rivers and canals and the latter, which became increasingly more important after the 15^th century, were more common for ocean transportation. However, ocean trips were costly, dangerous, and lengthy. It took Columbus over two months to travel from Spain to North America, and in the early part of the 1899s a voyage from Liverpool to New York required three to four weeks.⁴ Wind power has been used for other purposes for millennia. In particular, simple wind-powered machines helped draw water from wells (China) and grind grain (Middle East). In the early part of the second millennium CE, these technologies were brought to Europe. The Dutch developed large windmills to drain marshes and lakes. Another inanimate renewable source has also been known for millennia, hydro power. Employed for centuries largely to mill grains, in the late 18^th century became the main energy power for textile mills in England, an initial step in the expansion of the Industrial Revolution. Still, even by the end of the 18^th century, these two renewable energy sources played a minor role in the energy mix.

 

During the first renewable energy era, the overwhelming share of the population lived in a rural setting, gathering or producing its food and energy supply, often short of both, and lacked even the most basic amenities, such as running water and indoor sanitation. Conspicuous consumption was a privilege of the few, and even this offered a lower material standard of living than that enjoyed by the average American family in 1950. The strength to survive such a precarious existence was provided by a network of formal and informal institutions of social cohesion which supported the relationship among people (from extended family to clan and tribe) and between the human and the beyond.

 

The First Transition                                  

 

As shown in table I-1, global energy consumption more than tripled over the 80 years from 1820 to 1900 (1.5 % a year on average). One-third of this increase was due to population growth and two-thirds to higher per capita energy consumption. This transition period also marks the beginning of a geographic differentiation in energy consumption. In 1820, Europe and North America combined for a population share of 34 percent and accounted for 39 percent of energy consumption, primarily because of the more advanced stage of industrialization in Western Europe. By 1900 their share of the population had risen to 33 percent while that of global energy consumption jumped to 72 percent. Thus, in this period, a ten percentage points increase in their population share (a 45 % increase) was associated with a near doubling of their energy consumption share. While energy consumption per capita changed very little in Latina America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, it rose by one-third in North America, by more than two-thirds in Eastern Europe, and more than tripled in Western Europe. Although it more than doubled globally, per capita energy consumption was still far below the level considered necessary to provide the basic human needs today.    

 

Most of the increase in energy consumption in the first renewable energy transition period was due to the expanded use of coal. The combination of fuelwood and fodder  accounted for only 16 percent of the increase in global energy consumption.

Although occasional use of coal dates back centuries and outcrops of coal were used by the Romans, the diversification of the energy mix began in England in the 16^th century and was driven by a combination of factors: increased urbanization, climate change, and change in land ownership. Up to the end of the 1500s England’s population was scattered through a large number of villages and small towns. Even London at the time had a population of about 60,000. Over the next two centuries the population of London experienced explosive growth, increasing tenfold by the end of the 1700s.⁵ At the same time, average annual temperatures began to decline leading to what is commonly known as the Little Ice Age. The combination of urbanization and colder climate put an unbearable strain on the supply of wood and charcoal and led to deforestation and skyrocketing prices of wood. The poor turned to coal, a dirtier but cheaper fuel. The production of coal benefited from government policy when in 1534 Henry VIII expropriated the property of the Catholic Church and opened the coal-rich lands of Northern England to private enterprise. Initially coal was produced from open-pit mines. As demand increased, deeper seems of coal were mined and these new mines were subject to flooding. Early attempts by Spanish and English engineers at solving this problem through the use of pumps powered by steam engines were successful only in the case of shallow wells. A major improvement was made by English engineer Thomas Newcomen who in 1712 built the first commercially successful steam-engine pump. The transformation of the steam engine into the driver of the Industrial Revolution was largely due to the inventive ability of James Watt, a machine maker associated with Glasgow University, and the business acumen of Mathew Boulton, an English entrepreneur.⁶ The steam engine made coal the king of fuels.                 

The expansion of coal production had uneven effects on various sectors of the economy. Household behavior was largely unaffected because coal was the equivalent of a supercharged charcoal. It was just heavier and packed a higher energy content, thus reducing storage space, and the only adjustment required was a new stove or furnace capable of withstanding the higher heat. The household energy mix, however, was drastically altered. In the United States, for example, by 1900 coal accounted for nearly two-thirds of energy consumption by households⁷. The greater availability of coal had a major impact on the industrial sector and particularly the iron and steel industries which required the higher heat that it provided. Through it effect on the iron and steel industries, coal revolutionized the US industrial structure by stimulating the development of new industries (steam engines, railroad ties, farm machinery). Because these new industries were capital intensive, coal also led to the expansion of the financial sector. It also resulted in a major change in the structure of energy production and distribution. Fuelwood facilitated a decentralized energy market. In the rural areas, where most of the population resided, its user tended also to be its producer as part of a farmer’s land was a woodlot. The cities and town were supplied with fuelwood and charcoal by a scores of small entrepreneurs. Coal led to the concentration of production. This, together with concentration of the industry it spawned due to the required heavy capital investment, and the expansion of the financial system led to the creation of industry barons, a small number of very rich families. In 1918, half of the richest 31 American families listed by Forbes made their fortunes in industries related directly or indirectly to the expansion of coal: 4 in steel, 3 in railroads, 3 in mining, and 5 in banking.⁸

A new technological advance had a great impact on coal consumption: the marriage of coal and the steam engine revolutionized the transportation system, especially for goods. Improvements in the weight-to-power ratio of steam engines led to a radical transformation of the transportation system by facilitating the introduction of a new mode of transportation: the railroad. The first railroads were constructed in the span of a couple of decades in the early 19^th century in the U.K., continental Europe, and the United States. Initially in England, railroads served primarily the purpose of transporting coal. Over time, they became a major mode of transporting goods and people. In the United States, railroads were instrumental in opening up the western frontier. Initially in the UK, railroads powered by steam engines helped the expansion of both the supply of and demand for coal by increasing the transportation capacity, reducing travel time for coal from the mine to the market, and lowering substantially transportation costs.⁹ The expansion of railroads also stimulated the iron industry through its need for rails and steam engines. This, in turn, increased the demand for coal. The steam engine also contributed to the expansion of production in other manufacturing industries, particularly textiles.

Other inventions stimulated the use of coal beyond manufacturing and transportation. When a Canadian physician and geologist named Abraham Gesner developed a method of producing a liquid fuel, which he called kerosene, from coal, bitumen and shale oil, the role of coal in lighting expanded. Gesner founded the Kerosene Lighting Company in 1850 in Halifax and in 1857 expanded his business to Long Island, USA.¹⁰ Inventors in a variety of countries were also engaged in the development of radiators for home heating. Among the earliest developers of radiators we find Franz San Galli (1857), a Russian businessman, Roberts Briggs and Joseph Nason (1863), Nelson Bundy (1872), and David Lennox, all Americans. The invention of the radiator and its later refinements facilitated the use of coal for home heating.¹¹

The major technological advance that affected the demand for coal was the discovery of electricity. After Benjamin Franklin’s 1752 experiment which showed that lightning was static electricity, the pace of research on electricity quickened. In 1780 an Italian physician named Luigi Galvani used static electricity to cause a twitch in the legs of a dead frog, and soon after discovered that a similar switch can be generated with contact with dissimilar metals. In 1793 Alessandro Volta, another Italian scientist, produced the first prototype of a battery and seven years later discovered the “Volta pile”, the combination of two dissimilar metals separated by wet cardboard. A major breakthrough was made in 1831 by Michael Faraday, a British scientist, who discovered that an electric current flowed through the wires when a magnet was moved inside a coil of copper wires.  In 1878 Thomas Edison built a DC (direct current) generator. In the same year Joseph Swan, a British scientist, invented the incandescent filament lamp, and year later Thomas Edison built a light bulb with a carbon filament that lasted 14 hours. In 1880 American Lester Alan Pelton constructed the first hydro turbine. The 4^th of September 1882, Thomas Edison built the first electricity generating plant in a building located at 257 Pearl Street in New York city. It was a coal fired plant and supplied enough power for 400 lamps and 82 customers. The 30^th of September of the same year, H.S. Rogers, an American paper manufacturer, built the first hydroelectric power plant on Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin.¹²        

While Thomas Edison was focusing on direct current (DC), scientists in Europe directed their research at alternating current (AC). This strand of research was  brought to the United States in 1884 by Nikola Tesla, an engineer and inventor of Serbian origin, born in Croatia in 1856. In 1882 he went to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company and a year later built his first induction motor. In 1884 tesla emigrated to the US to work for Thomas Edison, but the two inventors clashed over DC versus AC. In 1888 George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh purchased Tesla’s patents and offered him employment. In 1895 Westinghouse’s company built the first large AC hydroelectric generating plant in Niagara Falls, opening the door to long-distance distribution of electricity.¹² The full impact of electricity, however, was felt after 1900 and was part of the Great Energy Transformation that will be discussed in the next chapter.

These technological and energy developments had little effect on the life of most of the world’s population. Globally, more than four-fifths of the population lived in rural areas. Only in the more industrialized regions - Europe and the United States �" there was a major shift towards urbanization. In 1800, no US city and only three European cities �" London, Paris, and Naples �" made it to the list of the ten most populous cities. Ten years later, this list included three US cities (New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia), and four European countries (London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Manchester).¹³ In the United States, in 1990 close to 20 percent of the population lived in cities with a population over 100,000.¹⁴

Despite industrialization, greater urbanization, and higher per capita energy consumption, the average living standard remained very low. Even in the United States, at the beginning of the 20^th century more than half of the population lived in small farmhouses and a large portion of the urban population occupied crowded quarters with entire families sharing a couple of rooms. Only a small portion of these houses had indoor plumbing.¹⁵ Life expectancy was 48 years for Whites and 33 for Blacks, and half of children were poor.¹⁶ The social structure and its underlying value system remained largely unchanged. Workers toiled six days a week and found respite in the institutions of family, fellowship, and faith.

 

Notes

¹Paolo Malanima (2022), “World Energy Consumption Database: 1820-2020,” histecon.fas.harvard.edu/energyhistory/DATABASE%20World%20Energy%20Consumption(MALANIMA)pdf.      

²David Satterthwaite (16 January 2020), “The World’s 100 Largest Cities from 1800 to 2020, and Beyond,” Blog, IIEP.

 

³ Vaclav Smil (2018), Energy and Civilization: A History, Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press, First Paperback Edition, p. 178.

⁴Chelsea Follet and Andrea Vacchinato (2 August 2018), “A Reminder of How Far Transatlantic Travel Has Come,” Human Progress. www.humanprogress.org/a-reminder-of-how-far-transatlantic-travel-has-com/

 

⁵Tim Lambert, “A History of English Population.” www.histories.org/populstion.html.

 

⁶Stephanie Paine (2017), “Power Through the Ages^,” Nature. www.pubmed.ncbi.nih.gov/29189810/.

 

⁷Bonnie Maas Morrison (1992), “Ninety Years of U.S. Household Energy History: A Quantitative Update”. www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/1992/data/papers/SS92_Panel10_Paper17.pdf.

 

⁸Chase Peterson-Withorn (2017), “From Rockefeller to Ford, Forbes 1918 Ranking of the Richest People in America,” Forbes, 27 September 2017.

 

⁹Spartacus Educational, “Transport and the Industrial Revolution.” www.spartacus-educational.com/U3Ahistory17.htm.

 

¹⁰The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Abraham Gesner”. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/abraham-gesner.

 

¹¹www.theradiatorcentre.com/article/11/the-history-of-the-radiator.

 

¹¹Iberbrola, “150 Years on the Path towards Sustainability: History of Electricity,” www.iberbrola.com/sustainability/history-electricity.

 

¹²Encyclopedia Britannica, “Nikola Tesla,” www.britannica.com/biography/nikola-tesla.

 

¹³J.C. Chesnais (2009), “Population, Urbanization, and Migration,” in Anatoly G. Visnevsky, ed. (2009), Population and Development: Challenges and Opportunities, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems.

¹⁴Demographia, “Largest US Cities in 1900,” www.demographia.com/db-uscityr1900.htm.

 

¹⁵Steve Kerch (2000), “1900 to 2010: Evolution of the American Home Today :Fun Housing Facts, The Chicago Tribune, 18 June 2000.

 

¹⁶Digital History, “The United States in 1900,” ID 3175.