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Smil's history of energy

Vaclav Smil (2017). Energy and Civilization. A history. The MIT Press.

The choice of energy flows as the focus of a history of the human species and our culture is original; such a history could not have been written by many others besides Vaclav Smil. Right from the start, the narrative plunges straight into quantitative data: how many watts human labour or a horse can produce, the energy expenditure required for various forms of farming, and the energy return of crops. Slow progress is made throughout the centuries and millenia with inventions such as water wheels and windmills and their successive improvements. As Smil shows in several illustrations, each new technology starts out as relatively inefficient, and are gradually improved through a series of inventions. The amount of fuel, or the weight of motors needed to produce the same effect decreases and in some cases approaches a theoretical limit.

The book does not explain the physics or the technologies other than cursorily, and many facts are mentioned in passing that would require the reader to either possess an encyclopedical knowledge or look up the details. Nonetheless, it can be read withouth checking these references to special fields.

The perspective that emerges is that of a precarious existence always balancing gains and losses. For instance, the introduction of draft animals like horses dramatically increased the available power for farming, so more land could be used for food production for humans. At the same time, the draft animals had to be fed from feed harvested from the same fields which further increased the need of land.

Fossil fuels made orders of magnitude more energy available, but the interesting point Smil returns to is how it was always through new inventions that the energy was able to be used more efficiently. Pollution and climate change are discussed only briefly. Not to say that Smil neglects these problems, they are just not in the focus. As for peak oil, Smil comes to the conclusion that seems to prevail today, that resources will never be depleted; what will stop extraction is rather a rising cost and the serious effects of climate change.

Facing the recently begun energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, Smil is rather cautious, suggesting that all energy transitions have taken time to complete, with very low efficiencies the first few years. The current access to fossil fuels as a very convenient energy source, as well as raw material for fertilisers, pesticides, and plastics must be understood to be exceptional.

While some incurable optimists insist that we will once again invent ourselves out of the current predicament and others predict a rapid decline in living standards and, more crucially, the planetary ecosystem itself that puts our own species further existence in peril, Smil takes a more cautious intermediate position, reminding us that great human achievements in art, mathematics, or general enjoyment of life do not depend on the amount of energy consumption. It is clear that we will have to make do with less energy in the not so distant future, but that in itself doesn't have to be the end of everything.

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