Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age

2 The Rise of Coal

2 The Rise of Coal A t the beginning of the nineteenth century, communities across the world relied on resources like wood, wind, and water for most of their energy needs. Only about 10 percent of the commercial energy used in 1800 came from coal. Within a matter of decades, however, a massive growth in coal mining had taken place. Coal fueled profound transformations in industries across Europe and North America, but it also helped propel new waves of colonial conquest and global trade. In fact, during the nineteenth century coal allowed the capitalist world-economy to undergo a process of expansion that fundamentally refashioned societies all around the globe. But what factors allowed this first global energy shift of the modern age to take place? And why did this coal system become centered in Western Europe, rather than in the Asian societies that had more experience using the resource? As shown in this chapter, unique dynamics of political and commercial competition emerged in Europe that allowed technological barriers to the large-scale use of coal to be overcome. Transformations in financial institutions and social relationships generated by an emerging capitalist system also allowed for the development of large-scale coal industries in Europe and North America. The order imposed by British hegemony then fostered the expansion of coal mining across the world. Under the intersecting influence of these societal dynamics, coal grew into the world’s most important energy system in the course of only 60 years. An analysis of this historical transformation reveals the capacity for the world to undergo far-reaching global energy shifts in a handful of decades. The Early Development of Coal-Based Technologies It has often been argued that the main factor pushing societies toward coal was the material constraint posed by deforestation. It is true that The Rise of Coal 19 wood scarcities in Europe prompted many efforts to develop new energy sources in the early modern era. However, an analysis of the factors underlying the large-scale shift toward coal that began in the eighteenth century reveals that resource depletion pressures did not by themselves produce the transition. Instead, specific dynamics of geopolitical and commercial competition found in Europe were of central importance in propelling a shift to the large-scale use of coal resources. It is important to begin by noting that the human use of coal has deeper historical roots in Asia than in Europe.1 In fact, the earliest evidence of the human consumption of the resource comes from Bronze era archeological sites in China. By the eleventh century coal was being used extensively in Chinese metallurgical industries. The Chinese also appear to have been the first to dig shafts into the ground to extract coal, though in most cases the pits only went down to the point where water was encountered. While the Chinese led the way in developing uses for coal, there is also a long history of coal consumption in Europe. By the classical age of antiquity it was being used to heat homes in Greece, for instance, while Roman soldiers used it to heat their outposts in northern Britain. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, surface deposits were being mined in England, Belgium, and France. The development of underground shafts appears to have begun sometime thereafter, and by the thirteenth century efforts were being made in England to penetrate below water tables along particularly thick mineral seams. These European efforts to engage in large-scale coal mining were provoked to some degree by problems of deforestation. The extensive use of wood for ship construction, iron ore production, and home heating led to severe deforestation around urban and industrial centers, especially in England. From the sixteenth through the early eighteenth century, the price of wood and charcoal rose across Western Europe. Efforts were made to harness energy from peat and from water, but in many areas the lack of resources became a barrier to industrial production.2 Although energy deficits were intensifying in many parts of Europe during the Renaissance, it was by no means obvious that coal could fill the gap. There were significant hurdles standing in the way of a widespread shift toward reliance on coal. The water that seeped into shafts posed a key problem, both to Chinese miners in the eleventh century and to European miners in the seventeenth century. Even when coal was extracted, its price was inflated by the difficulties faced in transporting the...