The First Energy Transition
Our work on this theme revisits longstanding debates in the historigraphy of the British Industrial Revolution, including i) the relative roles of coal and steam power in British Industrialisation; ii) the extent to which waterpower was responsible for providing mechanical power to drive machinery; iii) whether widespread adoption of fossil fuels was necessary for modern societies to break Ricardian-Malthusian constraints, and enter a period of sustained, constinuous economic growth, and iv) the relationships between modernisation, industrialisation and fossil fule use.
