Wood Energy
EOTECHNIC

"When he had crossed the seventh mountain range, there his intuition led him to find the cedars... Lord Gilgamec began to chop at the cedars, while Enkidu lopped off their branches..."

Legend of Gilgamesh

The Legend of Gilgamesh describes killing the forest gods to harvest timber. But the myth also stands for a separation of nature and humanity.

Fourth century BC -- A scarcity of wood forced Greeks to develop solar energy.

Imperial Rome had to import lumber from as far away as the Black Sea.

Medieval Europe was devastated by timbering, especially for mining, as this print from Agricola's 1556 book shows.

Loss of forests led to the first conservation laws in Europe in the 14th century and, in England, eventually led to the use of "sea coal."

 
Philip Lebon discovers wood gassification and lights hotel in Paris, 1796. A few years later, William Murdock, worried that the French would surpass the British, tries the same experiment with coal and creates coal gas lighting.

 

 
The Mother of the Forest in what is now Yosemite Park was destroyed for a travelling exhibit, much to the dismay of conservationists in the US in the 1850s.

The forests of North America seemed endless to the pioneers.

In 1850, the average US home used 17.5 cords of wood, or 2.5 times the amount of energy for heat used today.

Here Ugandan women carry fuel wood home to use for cooking.

Modern fuel wood shortages

Today, two billion people rely on fuel wood for cooking.

In many places fuel wood is disappearing at a rapid rate. Fortunately, an anticipated crisis in Africa has not developed, but the level of concern is still high.