Solar, wind, water, bioenergy
The idea that solar energy is new, a reaction perhaps to the oil shocks of the 1970s, reflects the historical vacuum in which the global energy and climate debate has unfolded. Yet there are many historical lessons we need as we consider the path ahead.
The 1878 engraving, in the header above, shows Abel Pifre, a French engineer and student of Augustin Mouchot, running a printing press from the heat generated by a conical solar energy collector. This web site is dedicated to the memory of that act of journalistic perspicacity.
During the 1860s and 1870s, coal depletion was widely feared in Europe, and many people thought that civilization itself could be extinguished if coal reserves faltered. Scientists and engineers doubted that. They tackled the problem by insisting that solar and other formes of renewable energy were capable of extending the industrial revolution indefinitely, even if coal ran out. Pifre's professor, Augustine Mouchot, predicted:
“The time will arrive when the industry of Europe will cease to find those natural resources, so necessary for it. Petroleum springs and coal mines are not inexhaustible but re rapidly diminishing in many places. Will man, then, return to the power of water and wind? Or will he emigrate where the most powerful source of heat sends its rays to all? History will show what will come.” -- Augustine Mouchot, French engineer, 1873
Meanwhile in America, John Ericsson pursued a similar path. Ericsson was a naval engineer who invented the first ironclad, the USS Monitor, and like Mouchot and Pifre, was convinced that civilization need not expire with the end of fossil fuels. Ericsson invented solar machines that he tested on the roof of his Manhattan townhouse in the 1870s and 80s.
Within a few decades, the dependence on liquid fuels like kerosene and gasoline led to a very similar reaction from a different group of automotive inventors and racing enthusiasts. William K. Vanderbilt (right) preferred alcohol fuel (ethanol) when he raced between 1904 and 1910 because -- despite its lower BTU value -- ethanol had higher octane and could run a lighter, more powerful engine.
The limitations of making ethanol from food crops were well appreciated even since the 1920s, and the idea that cellulose would be the foundation for replacing petroleum was championed by Henry Ford, Isaac Asimov, and even, 90 years ago, by the scientist who founded the Cellulose Chemistry division of the American Chemical Society – Harold Hibbert.
“It looks as if in the rather near future, this country will be under the necessity of paying out vast sums yearly in order to obtain supplies of crude oil from Mexico, Russia and Persia,” Hibbert said in a 1921 journal article. “It is believed, however, that the chemist is capable of solving this difficult problem…. (and) it would seem that cellulose in one form or another is capable of filling that role.”
In 1925, Henry Ford told reporters: "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything.” Ford’s optimism about cellulosic biofuels was unusual for the auto, oil and chemical industries, which had all placed their bets on leaded gasoline and foreign oil.
Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov found all this fascinating. “Cellulose can be broken down into glucose molecules,” Asimov said in a 1986 article, “and the glucose solution can be fermented into alcohol… (and) used as a liquid fuel.” The advantage? “Cellulose is self-renewing if we are carful to conserve our forests, so the fuel we get from it could last indefinitely, whereas oil from the ground must be completely used up eventually.” (Asimov also found it hard to resist the science fiction notion that we need to beware of mutant microbes that might get outside their tanks and dissolve the forests.)
Another area of speculation was the idea of electric wind power. Windmills had been a fixture in the European and American landscape for centuries, but the first electric generating windmills in the early 1880s. The problem of how to match steady demand with intermittent supply was a preoccupation, and one British scientist, J.B.S. Haldane, suggested in 1924 that they could cover the British landscape with windmills generating both electricity and, when demand was low, hydrogen gas.