This book took me a while to get through. I’ve made two attempts, after failing the first time. Well, it was worth the effort. Before taking up the book I’ve encountered multiple references for the works of Professor Vaclav Smil, from journalists to Bill Gates (in his book, not in person). The title of the book drew me as it hinted that it would be more of a history book, rather than a book about physics or economics. There is nothing wrong with the former two, it is just that history I enjoy a little more.
When I was done reading, I realized that the book was about energy transitions. Although Prof. Smil has written a separate book dedicated to energy transitions, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about how he describes the advances of civilization through the process of discovery and improvement in technology of harvesting different sources of energy. The book slowly and meticulously describes how humanity went from one source of energy to another, all the time working to get more useful energy from the resources available.
Prof. Smil shows how energy could be used to measure almost everything that we do and debunks a lot of common myths on the way. He starts by examining how our bodies produce and use energy. “A slowly running 70 kg man will produce 800 W; the power of an accomplished marathoner running the race (32.195 km) in 2.5 hours will average about 1,300 W “. This is a reasonable starting point, given that during much of human history, we relied mostly on our muscles and animal muscles to move things around.
The shift from foraging and hunting to agriculture can be thought of as energy transition zero. This is when humans started to use more energy-rich crops. “Compared to foraging, early farming usually required higher human energy inputs—but it could support higher population densities and provide a more reliable food supply.” This enabled us to settle and feed many more people, than simple hunting and foraging ever would: “a single mill would have produced enough flour in a 10-hour shift to feed 2,500–3,000 people, a fair-sized medieval town.”
Energy surplus gave rise to the first civilizations such as Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations – they could use excess energy from agriculture to get more people to build pyramids, zikkurats, invent writing, and first muscle-powered machines. Still, during our agricultural period, we could only get better power output by using water as a prime mover (like for watermills) and wind, for windmills and sailing.
I used to think that using the energy of coal and oil was the first time in human history that humanity has severely damaged the environment to satisfy its energy needs. Smil debunked this myth, by showing just how severe the impact on the environment of using the oldest fossil fuel – wood: “The harvesting of wood for fuel (as well as for construction and shipbuilding) led to widespread deforestation, and the cumulative effect reached worrisome levels in previously heavily wooded regions. At the beginning of the eighteenth century about 85% of Massachusetts was covered by forests, but by 1870 only about 30% of the state was covered by trees”.
To us, it is clear now that such deforestation could not be sustainable, and a change in the primary energy source was in order. Around the same time, coal started to get some sizable share in the total energy production. The first coal-fired steam engines appeared as early as the 18th century, but only by the end of the 19th century, they became efficient enough to be widespread. Still, an average steam engine in the year 1900 wasted about 92% of coal.
It is widely believed that much of the 19th century was dominated by coal, and much of the 20th century was dominated by oil. Smil points out that both impressions are far from reality. In fact, in the 19th century, wood was at its peak as the primary energy source. And wood was still used in significant amounts up to the middle of the 20th century, as in China. In Russia, for example, wood was used to provide more than 20% of all primary energy in 1913.
Coal overtook wood in the first half of the 20th century as the primary energy source, and only recently made way for oil. It took coal two centuries to become dominant, and it took oil just one century to do the same (see picture)
 Source: Smil, Energy and Civilization |
We are just getting over our oil phase, aren’t yet done with gas, and have ditched nuclear. As Smil notes “Established sources and prime movers can be surprisingly persistent, and new supplies or techniques may become dominant only after long periods of gradual diffusion. A combination of functionality, accessibility, and cost explains most of this inertia.” As for nuclear, he calls it “successful failure”.
We are now in the middle of the next energy transition – a transition away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy. Use of fossil fuels created “the most worrisome challenge … the widespread environmental degradation.” As I’ve mentioned earlier, this is not the first time in history that we are facing environmental problems due to the way we get energy. This time, however, we are experiencing negative effects on a much larger scale. This is the primary driving force behind the current energy transition, and this sets it apart from the previous ones. All previous energy transitions lead to more energy being produced and consumed. This one is focused on using less and cleaner energy.
Now, using less energy to achieve the same or even greater results is a hallmark of ingenuity and efficiency: “…forced to compete globally, multinational companies strive to lower the energy intensity of their production, diffusing new techniques and fostering higher energy conversion efficiencies worldwide”. This quest for energy efficiency, along with a push for the decarbonization of energy will characterize the current energy transition.
The key question is when will this transition happen? Will it happen fast enough to stop the climate from deteriorating beyond any hope of recovery? Professor Smil is not optimistic about timelines. Energy transitions, defined as the time needed for a new energy source to take a large share in total supplied energy usually take two or three generations, or anywhere from 50 to 75 years. Smil thinks that only two technologies are capable of accelerating this energy transition – the swift scaling of nuclear power, and the availability of inexpensive energy storage, to store energy from solar and wind.
What about other multitude of sources and technologies? Hydrogen, nuclear fusion, wave energy, etc.? Professor Smil doesn’t go into details here, as this book is about history, not about the future. However, he urges us to “merely note the coexistence of two contradictory expectations concerning the energy basis of modern society: chronic conservatism (lack of imagination?) regarding the power of technical innovation, set against repeatedly exaggerated claims made on behalf of new energy sources.”
I have chosen to focus on energy transition in this review as it resonated with my work. However, the book is much more than that. It is a book about physics, history, and innovation. And surprisingly, it is also about why energy is not central to our civilization. Professor Smil refuses to fully equate energy use with civilization advances: “Very similar per capita energy use (for example, that of Russia and New Zealand) can produce fundamentally different outcomes, while highly disparate energy consumption rates have resulted in surprisingly similar levels of physical quality of life: South Korea and Israel have nearly identical human development index while the Korean per capita energy use is about 80% higher”.
It is refreshing to see towards the end of this book as Smil turns around and points, that it is possible to use watts to measure almost everything we do but not all. And what we cannot measure this way, may be the most important. The effect of culture, music, art, and literature cannot be explained in Watts: “No energetic considerations can explain the presence of Gluck, Haydn, and Mozart in the same room in Joseph II’s Vienna of the 1780s”. It also cannot explain sudden changes in societies: “An indisputable fact is that many instances of sociopolitical collapse came about without any persuasive evidence of weakened energy bases.”
Professor Smil wrote 47 books on energy and environment. I’ve read just one, but it got me hooked. I recommend it even if you are not working in the energy industry or it is not your field of study. At the very least you will have a massive collection of interesting facts that will liven up any cocktail party. And at the most – it will give you the tools and motivation to carry on whatever it is that you are doing in the energy field.