Part I: From muscle power to steam power

Conflicts around fundamental issues of energy arent new, they just underline how difficult a transition can be.

Anyone interested in the politics of energy today would do well to study the worlds first energy revolution, one that is often called the age of steam.

What you see is a transition between two forms of what is now called dispatchable energy; that is, energy you can control, rely on and send to places.

There was always non-dispatchable energy, like wind and water, but for many applications and a growing economy this wouldnt suffice.

The original form of dispatchable energy was muscle power, often forced muscle power. But around the second half of the 19th century dispatchable power increasingly looks like steam and coal.

But the transition from reliance on labour intensive muscle power to the steam engine wasnt easy. And with this transition came another social transition that was deeply connected, the abolition of forced muscle power or slavery, and its ugly brother indentured labour.

The large 35 tons steam hammer at the Woolwich arsenal, engraving from The Graphic, 1874, Great ... [+] Britain, 19th century. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

As the steam revolution gathers pace, we see numerous attempts at abolishing these types of forced labour; but reforms were to take many years, and many attempts at legislation and numerous uprisings of captives.

It's instructive to understand how one system of dispatchable energy would eventually be replaced by another system, to where we find ourselves today.

A long journey to the new dispatchable

Before 1860, if you wanted to move on land, you took a horse; if you wanted to pump water out of a mine, it would be done by a human with a bucket.

Wind and water did much of the heavy lifting, but sometimes, for properly dispatchable power muscle of both animal and human forms were the only solution.

These of course were powered by carbohydrates, which in turn could be created on farms and plantations which often used forced labour. So the ancient muscle energy paradigm had a certain simplicity.

As the 19th century progressed, movement increasingly could involve steam engines and thermodynamics. Calories for doing mechanical work were more and more likely to come from lumps of coal, and less likely to come from carbohydrate food fed to workers and draught animals.

By 1865, the same year the American Civil War over slavery was drawing to its bloody end, steam traction engines were just starting to replace muscle power on farms.

The problems along the way tell us much about what we can expect from replacing another form of dispatchable energy and trying to create a more modern one.

Lessons for todays energy revolution

In the development of steam, there was a lot of transitional technology and knowledge that had to be acquired first. From Watts first engine that pumped water to Stephensons rocket that moved people, lots of technological inventive steps were required.

The American Civil War and the numerous different acts and amendments that were required to achieve the abolition of slavery showed how reluctant we were to get rid of forced muscle power.

From a 19th Century point of view, getting rid of your coerced muscle workforce, however much it was the right thing to do, was still an act of faith. It was a moral vote, which hoped for a more technologically enabled future. That future was coming, but coming at the same slow pace that slavery was being dismantled.

As we stand on the brink of a new energy revolution, there are many things that would look familiar to our forebears two hundred years ago.

Perhaps most striking, is how difficult and politically charged is the transition, and how polarised are the two standpoints of old and new forms of energy.

Were not fighting a civil war over it yet, but things could hardly get anymore bitter.

In Australia so far, four prime ministers have changed over this fault line in our politics and no doubt there will be many more. There are echoes and parallels in Japan, California and in Poland where the regulator has described the situation as a tragedy.

In Germany, the long running battle between the lignite coal mining interests and renewables goes unabated. It has seen letter bombs sent and the rise of the extreme right wing populist movement, the AFD.

The government has told miners that they are part of an essential service to the state; but at the same time the same government is planning Germanys exit from coal altogether.

Such mixed messages are now typical of the predicament many countries find themselves in.

A lump of coal in Parliament

In Australia, this deeply embedded conflict is just as acute.

When Scott Morrison, the Australian Prime Minister, walked into the Australian Parliament with a lump of coal in his hand, saying theres nothing to fear he was speaking for a huge number of his constituents who also believe that getting rid of coal is reckless.

These people ask why their electricity keeps costing more and more, despite the promises of cheap solar electricity. Pauline Hanson, a veteran outspoken Australian right wing politician also speaks for the same audience.

They dont buy the romance of the renewable, they want the certainty, the dispatchability, of the fossil.

And who can blame them? We never reckoned for electricity prices going to an all time high.

Perhaps most vociferous in their criticism of what are perceived as white elephant projects like Snowy 2.0 is Bruce Mountain, who says it simply fills a gap in the national discourse.

On the other side there are the renewables supporters in all shades, in many parts of Europe and the West, including the more extreme Extinction Rebellion.

They look to the bushfires in Australia and say that our planet is on fire, set alight by the higher temperatures created by the carbon in fossil fuels.

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS - JANUARY 16: Members of Extintion Rebellion are preparing for the ... [+] demonstration that will take place in front of the Australian Embassy on January 16, 2020 in The Hague, Netherlands. Extinction Rebellion has demonstrated in front of the Australian embassy in protest of what they consider to be ineffective measures by the Australian government to fight the fires that plague the country.

They block roads and bring cities to a halt. Theirs is a moral crusade and justifies higher prices, extending fuel poverty to the many, and are ready to live with blackouts caused by uncertain amounts of electricity at peak demand times.

Indeed the moral dimension reminds us of the abolitionists fighting slavery.

Are these two sides going to magically heal their rifts and start understanding each other?

Theres no sign of that yet.

More significantly its becoming clear that its not just an ideological conflict.

In a report by McKinsey entitled Germanys energy transition at the crossroads, the consultancy throws a big question mark over the entire project of renewable energy and its integration into the grid.

It says Germany is in trouble on all three major counts: Energy security, price and of course, emissions targets. Germanys situation was summed up by Die Welt as disastrous.

In the second of this multi-part blog, well look at why this fault line is so difficult to overcome, and why so often it results in waste. Well see how its born of a new technological system thats being honed as we speak, one that is both audacious and innovative and some would say inevitable at the same time.

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What The Struggles Of The Past Teach Us About Our Next Energy System - Forbes