Water as White Coal
The article tells the story of the rise and decline of the significance and visibility of “white coal” and hydroelectricity over the course of the twentieth century.
The article tells the story of the rise and decline of the significance and visibility of “white coal” and hydroelectricity over the course of the twentieth century.
In the Middle Ages, the main energy sources were firewood, charcoal, animals, and human muscle power. By 1860, 93 percent of the energy expended in England and Wales came from coal. Why did the transition occur when it did and why was it so slow?
The introduction of new energy carriers and of engines able to transform energy into mechanical work was a necessary, although not unique, condition of modern growth in Europe and subsequently in the rest of the world.
As agents of knowledge and appropriators of technology, exhibitions (and most notably museum exhibitions) have played an important role in the early twentieth century, when gas and electricity, the quintessential modern energy sources, aimed to oust wood, coal, and peat while simultaneously competing intensely with each other.
This essay explores connections between energy regime changes and nutrition, as well as the impact of such changes on nutritional knowledge and food policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This essay contests the traditional narrative of the gas revolution in the Netherlands. To illustrate the domestic roots of revolutionary change, the essay focuses on gas use in households.
These essays showcase examples from Canada and Western Europe, offering insights into how different forms of environmental knowledge and environmental politics come to be seen as legitimate or illegitimate.
This article traces the development of environmentalism in Portugal, and particularly the role of environmental NGOs as producers of expert knowledge to be used in policy making. The Portuguese environmental movement has professionalized rather than formalizing as green political parties. Portuguese environmentalism has adapted and evolved under authoritarian regimes, neoliberalism, European integration, and the financial crisis.