The Energy Revolution: Lessons from History and Uganda’s Path Forward
In the early 19th century, the UK was the only country with significant coal extraction. Coal provided 95 percent of Britain’s primary energy, and British coal accounted for more than 90 percent of the fuel’s global production. In contrast, the rest of the world relied on traditional sources such as wood, charcoal, straw, and dried dung for fuel. Economies of these traditional low-energy soci- eties were stagnant or growing at a fraction of one percent a year. In 1800, wood supplied more than 90 percent of France’s energy. The transition from wood to coal marked the modern world’s first energy revolution. In the 1830s, high-pressure steam engines began to power the first railroads and oceangoing ships, while increasingly efficient stationary steam engines provided energy for industrial use. By the mid-1870s, coal supplied more than half of all primary energy in France. The US reached a tipping point between biomass and fossil fuels in 1884, Japan in 1901. At that time, coal and cr...