About this issue
Over the last two centuries, human beings have come to rely on ever-increasing quantities of energy to fuel their rising numbers and improving standards of living. On the one hand, this growing demand has led to marked transitions in patterns of energy production and consumption; on the other hand, the simplest forms of energy production remain essential to our societies. The coexistence of varied energy carriers and the resurgence, in a few cases, of older forms, have many explanations. In this volume of RCC Perspectives, scholars from around the world consider how our relationship to energy has changed, why it has changed, and how it may change in the years to come.
How to cite: Unger, Richard W. (ed.), “Energy Transitions in History: Global Cases of Continuity and Change,” RCC Perspectives 2013, no 2. doi.org/10.5282/rcc/5602.
Content
- Introduction by Richard W. Unger
The Long View
- Energy Transitions in History: The Shift to Coal by Robert C. Allen
- Arrested Development? Energy Crises, Fuel Supplies, and the Slow March to Modernity in Scotland, 1450–1850 by Richard Oram
- “The People’s Fuel”: Turf in Ireland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Liam Kennedy
- The Social Metabolism of European Industrialization: Changes in the Relation of Energy and Land Use from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century by Fridolin Krausmann
- Fossil Fuels Consumption and Economic Growth in Italy in the Last Two Centuries by Silvana Bartoletto
- The View from Below: On Energy in Soils (and Food) by Verena Winiwarter
The Twentieth Century and Beyond
- Telling by Showing: Early Twentieth Century Exhibitions as Advocates in Energy Transition Processes by Nina Möllers
- Energy Regimes, Foodways, and the Efficiency of the Human Engine by Karin Zachmann
- Hybridization of Electric Utility Regimes: The Case of Wind Power in Denmark, 1973–1990 by Matthias Heymann, Kristian H. Nielsen
- The AC Electrical Grid: Transitions into the Twenty-First Century by José R. Martí
- A Dutch Revolution: Natural Gas in the Netherlands by Ben Gales
- World War as a Factor in Energy Transitions: The Case of Canadian Hydroelectricity by Matthew Evenden
