| 1. |
- Gentvilaite, Ruta, et al.
(författare)
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The Role of Energy Quality in Shaping Long-Term Energy Intensity in Europe
- 2015
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Ingår i: Energies. - : MDPI AG. - 1996-1073. ; 8:1, s. 133-153
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- On the European aggregate level there is an inverted-U curve for long-term energy intensity. In the 19th century aggregate European energy intensity rose, followed by a declining trend during the 20th century. This article discusses the possible explanations for the declining trend during the 20th century and explores the role of energy quality as expressed in energy prices. For the first time a complete set of national energy retail prices covering two centuries has been constructed and used for Britain, while the energy price data previously available for Sweden until 2000 has been updated to 2009. This allows us to explore the role of energy quality in shaping long-term energy intensity. We find no relation between energy quality and energy intensity in the 19th century, while energy quality may have stimulated the declining energy intensity in Europe over the 20th century, but is not the sole or even main reason for the decline. Rather, increased economic efficiency in the use of energy services seems to have been the main driver for the decline after 1970, presumably driven by the information and communication technology.
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| 2. |
- Kander, Astrid, et al.
(författare)
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Energy availability from livestock and agricultural productivity in Europe, 1815-1913: a new comparison
- 2011
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Ingår i: Economic History Review. - : Wiley. - 1468-0289 .- 0013-0117. ; 64:1, s. 1-29
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores the proposition that a reason for high agricultural productivity in the early nineteenth century was relatively high energy availability from draught animals. The article is based on the collection of extensive new data indicating different trends in draught power availability and the efficiency of its use in different countries of Europe. This article shows that the proposition does not hold, and demonstrates that, although towards the end of the nineteenth century England had relatively high numbers of draught animals per agricultural worker, it also had low number of workers and animals per hectare, indicating the high efficiency of muscle power, rather than an abundance of such power.The higher efficiency was related to a specialization on less labour-intensive farming and a preference for horses over oxen.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Kander, Astrid, et al.
(författare)
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International Trade and Energy Intensity during European Industrialization, 1870-1935
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecological Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0921-8009. ; 139, s. 33-44
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Previous research suggests that there is an inverted U-shape curve for energy intensity in the long-run for Western Europewith a peak in the early 20th century. This paper tests the hypothesis that the increase of German and British energy intensity was an effect from the concentration of heavy industrial production to these countries, although the consumption of a significant share of these goods took place elsewhere. We use an entirely new database that we have constructed (TEG: Trade, Energy, Growth) to test whether these countries exported more energy-demanding goods than they imported, thus providing other countries with means to industrialize and to consume cheap-energy demanding goods. We find that the U-shape curve is greatly diminished but does not disappear. The pronounced inverted U-curve in German energy intensity without trade adjustments is reduced when we account for energy embodied in the traded commodities. For Britain the shape of the curve is also flattened during the second half of the 19th century, before falling from WWI onwards. These consumption-based accounts are strongly influenced by the trade in metal goods and fuels, facilitating industrialization elsewhere.
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| 5. |
- Kander, Astrid, et al.
(författare)
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Power to the People - Energy in Europe over the last five Centuries
- 2013
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century--fueled by coal and steam engines--redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. Power to the People offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand. Astrid Kander is professor of economic history at Lund University. Paolo Malanima is director of the Institute of Studies on Mediterranean Societies at the National Research Council in Italy. Paul Warde is reader in early modern history at the University of East Anglia and research associate at the Centre for History and Economics, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. Endorsement: "Power to the People is a work of impressive scholarship, offering extensive and detailed quantitative information--much of which is new or not widely available--with readable explanations of the technical innovations that drove economic performance. It shows how energy use has long been central to Europe's economic growth, but that its role has been neither simple nor uniform."--William M. Cavert, University of Cambridge "Power to the People is a meaningful contribution to our knowledge of the economic consequences of changes in energy and its use. The book provides a thoughtful and interesting historical approach to a timely question--can we continue to achieve economic growth and high living standards, particularly in poorer or developing countries, while decreasing energy use to reduce environmental impacts?"--Lynne Kiesling, Northwestern University
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| 6. |
- Nielsen, Hana, et al.
(författare)
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East versus West: Energy intensity in coal-rich Europe, 1800–2000
- 2018
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Ingår i: Energy Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 1873-6777 .- 0301-4215. ; 122, s. 75-83
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a stylized graph of the energy intensities in two typical European sets of countries: the East and the West, in parallel to the existing research on the European North – South. The coal-rich West and East differ from the coal-poor South and North, in that their pattern is an inverted U-curve, while both North and South have consistently declining energy intensities. Energy intensity peaks about 50 years earlier in the West than in the East. For the first time we have been able to demonstrate that the gap between the West and East actually started in the 1950s, and to single out the main drivers behind the East European inefficiency. It was not general systematic wastefulness or lack of innovations, but surprisingly for a planned economy, it was the inefficiency in the expanding electricity system that accounted for most of the effect, together with the structural change towards heavy industrial production. As much of the industrial production became electrified and powered by less efficient electricity, this had a snowball effect through the whole value chain of the production. The negative impact of the planned economy on energy intensity was largest between 1948 and 1970.
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| 7. |
- Nielsen, Hana, et al.
(författare)
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East versus West: Energy Transition and Energy Intensity in Coal-Rich Europe 1830-2000
- 2016
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The paper examines energy consumption in Britain, Germany and Czechoslovakia over 130 years, including both traditional and modern energy carriers. The article is based on new series of energy consumption for Czechoslovakia that includes traditional energy sources, and, which is compared to energy use in other coal-rich countries in Europe: Germany and Britain. Changes in energy consumption are decomposed into effects from population growth, economic growth and energy intensity. There are two major findings from the long-run transitions we identify. First, by exploring the coal transition for coal-rich versus coal-poor countries in Europe, we find some remarkable similarities between both Germany and Czechoslovakia. We show that when we include Germany, England and the Czech Republic there is in an inverted U-curve in energy intensity, even when traditional energy carriers are taken into account, in contrast with results for four coal-poor countries in the Northern and Southern parts of Europe, where energy intensity was either declining or staying fairly constant in the long run. Secondly, the paper identifies a different transition path after the WII, a period in which Czechoslovakia’s energy intensity diverged from the trend observed in previous decades and also in Germany and England. Through a more detailed decomposition of the Czechoslovak energy intensity after 1950, we argue that the rise in energy intensity was a consequence of multiple forces, including high industrial energy use, structural change towards metals and chemicals (the backbone of central planning) and inefficiencies in energy use in those two sectors as well as high transformation losses of theelectricity production. We suggest the central-planning system to be the main driver of this development, but with effects that are particular to some sectors rather than spread across all energy use.
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| 8. |
- Nielsen, Hana, et al.
(författare)
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Energy efficiency and the productivity race in industry
- 2016
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The major aim of this paper is to analyze energy use and particularly energy productivity in some of the major manufacturing processes, such as iron and steel or paper production. Energy, as one of factors of production and substitute to labor, has often been neglected in various productivity benchmark studies. It is the aim of this paper to further investigate this relationship between energy and labor productivity, with a specific focus on the manufacturing industries across Europe and the US.
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| 9. |
- Theodoridis, Dimitrios, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Trade and overcoming land constraints in British industrialization: an empirical assessment
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Global History. - 1740-0228. ; 13:3, s. 328-351
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Land was an unambiguous constraint for growth in the pre-industrial period. In Britain it was 15 overcome partly through the transition from traditional land-based goods to coal (vertical 16 expansion) and partly through accessing overseas land, primarily from colonies (horizontal 17 expansion). Kenneth Pomeranz suggested that horizontal expansion may have outweighed 18 vertical expansion in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Taking a more complete 19 approach to trade, we find that Britain was a net exporter of land embodied in traded 20 commodities, apart from in the early nineteenth century, when potash (rather than cotton or 21 timber) constituted the major land-demanding import from North America. The vertical expan- 22 sion was generally larger than the horizontal expansion. In other words, Britain was not simply 23 appropriating flows of land and resources from abroad but simultaneously providing its trading 24 partners with even more land-expanding resources.
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| 10. |
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