Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America by Christopher F. Jones, and: Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest by Andrew Needham (review)

For good reason, scholars are paying attention to energy systems recently. International climate change negotiations along with rapid advances in renewable energy technology and game-changing reductions in the cost of solar and wind energy have brought transformative changes and challenges to the fossil-fuel based energy regime that has reined supreme for the last century. It is a good time to reassess where we are, how we got here, and where we might be heading in the near future regarding the energy systems that undergird industrialism and modern life. These two monographs by Christopher Jones and Andrew Needham are among a growing body of historical studies that critically examine the evolution, structure, and consequences of our modern energy systems penned at a time when energy technologies and institutions are undergoing fundamental reinvention.

Jones sets the stage in Routes of Power by examining how the fossil fuel (“mineral”) energy regime established its hegemony in the 19^th century. His key argument, reflected in the book’s title, is that “large energy transport systems”—canals for barging coal, oil pipelines, and high-voltage electric transmission lines—created the infrastructure for the fossil fuel regime, which cast the die, so to speak, for how our energy system would evolve (p. 2). Early innovations and investments gained momentum through economies of scale, political support, cutthroat competition, and what Jones calls reinforcing or synergistic “feedback loops” in which technologies for creating or using energy were designed to be compatible with the prevailing energy infrastructure.

Jones tells the story of how these routes of power for the mineral energy regime developed over time, providing rich and convincing material evidence for his arguments. He also provides a clear and compelling conceptual framework to organize and interpret this history. Each chapter reiterates a set of repeating themes starting with the relatively rapid advance of fossil fuel energy following development of effective transport infrastructures for moving coal or oil or electricity from sites of production to sites of consumption. This transition generated and was, in turn, accelerated by what Jones calls “landscapes of intensification” where industrial organization and mass production created economies of scale, which the above-mentioned feedback loops further reinforced. These landscapes of intensified energy production, however, also created extensive and largely unregulated environmental impacts and labor exploitation leading to a parallel landscape of inequitably distributed costs, harms, and benefits. Jones identifies both winners and losers in the shift to a mineral energy regime.

A final recurring theme of Jones’s study is that supply drives demand just as often as the reverse. Repeatedly, he describes how economies of scale led to a surfeit of supply, which drove the suppliers of coal and oil and electricity to invent marketing campaigns to encourage greater consumption. Profligate and wasteful energy use resulted. As he notes in the introduction, the creation of the fossil fuel world was “neither natural nor inevitable” (p. 2), but instead a result of conscious decisions, policies, and choices that have left us today with a set of troubling legacies as we seek to create a cleaner, more renewable, non-carbon based energy system with a more equitable distribution of costs and benefits.

Routes of Power is an admirably well-organized and well-written monograph, deftly balancing empirical data with story-driven interpretation. The book is a pleasure to read from start to finish. For those considering assigning the book for a course, it offers several virtues. Each chapter helpfully starts with a succinct introduction of the material, the organization is clear and consistent throughout the monograph, and the concluding chapter offers a collection of concise takeaway messages about energy and society. I would offer only a small quibble about some of the concluding points. Jones...