Energy Policy 50 (2012) 17

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Energy Policy
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Editorial

Past and prospective energy transitions: Insights from history

article info
Keywords:
Energy transition
Historical
Low carbon economy

abstract
This introduction to the special issue on past and prospective energy transitions presents some insights
from research into past energy transitions of relevance for a possible transition to a low carbon
economy. It also provides a synthesis of insights generated during a workshop attended by many of
the leading researchers on this topic at Cardiff University in April 2011. The nal section introduces the
articles in the special issue. It is hoped that the workshop and this issue will help to move forwards the
integration of the exciting research on past energy transitions in ways that will also offer valuable
insights into the challenges of prospective low carbon transitions.
& 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Climate change is likely to be one of the greatest threats to
global economic security and social stability in the course of the
twenty-rst century. The global economys willingness and ability
to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and control greenhouse gas
concentrations will be crucial for climate stabilization. Many
suggest that a transition to a low carbon economy would be an
important step towards meeting this demand for climate stability
(Grubb et al., 2008; Foxon et al., 2008).
Many aspects of future energy transitions are highly uncertain
(by energy transition, we mean the switch from an economic
system dependent on one or a series of energy sources and
technologies to another). The building blocks necessary for understanding such transitions include theory, empirical evidence and
analysis, and simulation exercises. Energy transitions, however,
have in the past tended to be relatively rare events whose
complex and long drawn-out processes unfolded over decades
and sometimes centuries. This implies that to gather qualitative
and quantitative data about and insights into energy transitions,
researchers should not conne themselves only to evidence from
the recent past. Furthermore, identifying patterns in energy
transitions for a particular country (with some semblance of
social and cultural continuity) rather than across countries may
require the analysis of events over hundreds of years.
In addition to historical expertise, the analysis of energy
transitions has benetted from researches associated with a
number of other disciplines ranging from economics and sociology to geography and engineering. The practitioners of these
disciplines normally publish their research in separate journals,
and those interested in their observations and insights must
search through many different literatures. In our view, a richer
and more integrated understanding of past and prospective

0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.08.014

energy transitions will ow from closer contacts and joint work

across these disciplines.
In order to facilitate more integrated understanding and sharing
of knowledge, a three-day workshop was organized at Cardiff
University in April 2011 (see Acknowledgements below). At this
workshop, a multi-disciplinary group of the leading researchers on
past energy transitions came together to share their research, ideas
and conclusions. There were 20 talks, including keynote speeches

from Robert C. Allen and Arnulf Grubler,

a series of break-out groups
and many informal discussions.
Following the success of the workshop, many agreed that the ball
needed to keep rolling, and that a special issue of Energy Policy
would be a good way to do this. Thus, this special issue seeks to bring
together some of the different literatures on past energy transitions
and to raise awareness among those concerned with energy policy of
the rich possibilities of learning from them.
In this introduction to the issue, we rst present some insights
from recent research into past energy transitions. This does not
pretend to be a review of the literature, and aims to do no more
than complement the reviews provided by the articles in the
special issue. The third section attempts a synthesis of some of
the comments made during the Cardiff workshop. The nal
section introduces the articles in the special issue. We hope that
this special issue will help to move towards a closer integration of
the exciting on-going research on past energy transitions, while
also offering valuable insights into the challenges of and policies
for prospective low carbon transitions.

2. Some insights from research into past energy transitions

As mentioned, researchers concerned with energy policy from
a range of disciplines have looked into the past to investigate

Editorial / Energy Policy 50 (2012) 17

transitions that took place in current industrialised economies.

Schurr and Netschert (1960), for example, presented one of the
rst case studies of a transition from biomass to coal to petroleum
in the US. This broad transition was much faster in the US
(i.e., decades instead of centuries) than for the United Kingdom
(Humphrey and Stanislaw, 1979; Fouquet and Pearson, 1998;
Warde, 2007; Fouquet, 2008). Other European experiences
showed that the broad historical context (including resource
availability, industrial and household energy demands institutions and government policies) was important for explaining
specic energy transitions (Gales et al., 2007; Bartoletto and
Rubio, 2008; Madureira, 2008; Kunnas and Myllyntaus, 2009).
Historical evidence has offered a number of insights into how
prospective energy transitions might unfold. A review of 14 past
transitions indicated that, for a new energy source to become
dominant, the energy services (such as space and water heating,
powering machinery and appliances, passenger and freight transport, and lighting) it provided had been cheaper than the incumbent energy source (Fouquet, 2010). That is, generally, where the
energy transition succeeded, the cost of producing the service
(e.g., the effective heating generated, the passenger-kilometres
travelled, or the lumen-hours generated from lighting), as estimated by combining the energy price and the energy efciency of
the conversion technology for the new source, was lower than for
the incumbent source. While this study did indicate that many
of the services provided by the new source were initially more
expensive than those from the incumbent source, the new energy
source or its related technology offered enhanced characteristics
(including ease of use, exibility and cleanness, or exclusivity,
novelty and status) that consumers were willing to pay for.
This suggests that the new energy sources and technologies
initially developed in niche markets and that when the services
associated with them became sufciently cheap to compete
with the incumbents and diffused more widely, an energy transition was likely to unfold. Indeed, in this stage of a potential
transition, both learning and major economies of scale were vital

for the new energy source and technology to compete (Grubler

et al., 1999).
In the transitions explored, the process from technological
innovation to niche market to dominance took a minimum of 40
years. An aggregate energy transition, involving the entire economy, could take centuries, as it depended on the switch in fuels
and technologies for multiple energy services in many sectors
(Fouquet, 2010; Allen, 2009; Mokyr, 2009). Although requiring
further research, it appears that in many cases the process of the
transition was not smooth. Transitions have often depended on
the timing and inuence of broader external landscape forces.
Both the price of the energy service and the price of the energy
matter. For instance, peak energy prices, as occurred for coal in
1921 and 1926, or for oil in 1973, 1979 or 2008, sometimes
pushed consumers away from a particular energy source, while
scrapping old technology associated with the incumbent source.
Then, in the next period of economic growth, some producers and
consumers were willing to make investments in new technologies
and networks. So, although energy service prices have been
crucial for determining consumer choices, uctuations in energy
prices have been critical for diverting consumers away from one
energy source and technology and towards another, and in
combination with the relative prices of labour and capital, have
been instrumental in giving producers incentives to develop new
technologies (Allen, 2009).
The nature of a new energy technology (as well as the
companies or oganisations selling and promoting it) has played
a crucial role in its uptake (Smil, 1994, 2010). However, successful
uptake tended to depend on the co-evolution of technologies,
industries and institutions that enabled new energy sources to

emerge from niches and become core elements in the regime

(Geels, 2002; Foxon, 2011). This allowed technological clusters

to dominate and ultimately create lock-ins (Grubler

et al., 1999;
Unruh, 2000; 2002; Unruh and Carrillo-Hermosilla, 2006). At the
same time, the losing incumbents (in any transition) have been
known to ght back, potentially creating sailing ship or lastgasp effects (Rosenberg, 1976; Utterback, 1994; Snow, 2010).
Also, in certain countries, resource endowments and government
objectives were pivotal in pushing or delaying the uptake (e.g.,
Madureira, 2008).
Historical experience also suggests that energy transitions
have been characterised by major increases in energy consump
tion (Grubler,
2004). Looking at trends in global energy consumption since 1800, Fig. 1 shows that each energy transition has
led to greater energy consumption. Inevitably, the share of
individual energy sources changed (from woodfuel to coal to
petroleum and increasingly towards natural gas), yet the
absolute consumption of each energy source has continued to
increase, albeit more slowly than for the new sources. Thus, even
a major shift towards low carbon energy does not guarantee
that the global economy will reduce fossil fuel consumption.
Instead, such a shift may simply promote overall greater energy
consumption.
Energy transitions which led to major reductions in the price
of energy services (Fouquet, 2011) and increases in the consumption of energy services (Fouquet and Pearson, 2012), have often
been associated with periods of rapid economic growth and of
major transformations in economic structure and activity (Cipolla,
1962; Wrigley, 1988, 2010; Allen, 2009; Ayres and Warr, 2009;
Mokyr, 2009). Many of the historical energy transitions do t
within a broader cluster of technologies and were supported by a
set of institutionseach cluster and set representing a distinct era
or wave of economic growth (Freeman and Louc- a, 2001). Thus,
one might expect that a transition to a low carbon economy could
also be the source for the transformation of the economy and of a
new phase of major economic growth.
Historically, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were
not always the main source of greenhouse gas emissions (see
Fig. 2). Prior to the transition to and growth in fossil fuel
consumption, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (from
methane and land-use related carbon dioxide) appear to have
been relatively stable. So, this invites us to believe in the
stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions to the levels that
existed before 1850 and the global transition to fossil fuels.

14,000
12,000
Million tonnes of oil equivalent

Nuclear
Renewables

10,000

Transition to
Natural Gas

8,000

Gas

6,000
Oil

4,000
2,000

Transition
to Oil
Transition
to Coal

Coal

Woodfuel
0
1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

Fouquet (2009)
Fig. 1. Global energy consumption and transitions, 18002010. Source: Fouquet
(2009).

Editorial / Energy Policy 50 (2012) 17

40,000

Million tonnes of CO2 equivalent

35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
1850

1875

1900

1925

1950

1975

2000

Marland et al (2007), Houghton (2008), Stern and Kaufmann (1998)

Fig. 2. Global emissions of carbon dioxide and methane (18502000). Sources:

Marland et al. (2007); Houghton (2008); Stern and Kaufmann (1998).

3. Insights from a workshop on past and prospective energy

transitions
Here, we outline some of the insights from the Workshop that
are also reected in the papers in this special issue. All the Workshop participants were involved in the process of providing comments at the end of each session (which were entitled Past
International Experiences of Energy Transitions, Features of Past Energy
Transitions, Generalising about Past Energy Transitions, Commonalities
and Differences between Past and Future Transitions, Lessons for Future
Transitions and Related-Policy), and the comments are not individually attributed. Also, because they are drawn from the workshop, no
attempt is made here to link them to references or papers. Finally,
the following discussion is a structured series of observations and
makes no claim to be a comprehensive review of our understanding,

concerns and questions about historical energy transitionsGrubler

(2012) in this issue offers a review of the literature. Inevitably, the
workshop raised many more questions than it answered, and
opened more doors than it closed. This was seen a positive outcome,
and the foundation of many future debates and developments.
3.1. Methodology
Most participants in the workshop were interested in discussing how insights from the past were relevant for the challenge of
a transition to a low carbon economy. This involved asking
fundamental questions about how have understandings from
history guided us in the past?, can they guide us into the
future? and what are the methodological and practical pitfalls
of using history as a guide to the future?
Interestingly, some warned that past energy transitions may not
be the best analogies for a future low carbon energy transition. For
instance, because of the nature of a low carbon transition, where
reductions in emissions yield overall societal benets, other social
challenges, such public health problems and how they were recognized and dealt with, might offer additional or even better insights.
Indeed, it was argued that the choice and selection of historical cases
ought to be driven by a diagnosis of the type of challenges that we
currently face. Nevertheless, while acknowledging these caveats
(which might act as a foundation for future meetings), the workshop
focused on lessons from past energy transitions.
It was proposed that sound models, consistent data and even
memorable anecdotes can be important tools for generating
insights and distilling lessons from past experiences. Some
participants highlighted the urgent need to construct causal

models of transitions with explicit methodologies for how to

learn from past energy and other transitions for future managed
transitions. Others argued that to understand the drivers, nature
and impacts of historical energy transitions, it is important to
study demand, supply and their interactions using different
methods and methodologies. Similarly, participants saw the value
of moving on from the analysis of aggregated energy transitions
(important for the broader picture) towards a disaggregated focus
on sectors and services, and towards a multi-level understanding
of transitions. Inevitably, though, the heterogeneity of actors,
energy sources, technologies and institutions involved in disaggregated transitions increases the range and complexity of the
analytical challenge. Equally, participants felt there to be an
insufcient understanding of the dynamics of transitions. Finally,
many agreed that there is much to be gained from further
collaboration, communication and sharing of international historical energy data.
A discussion revolved around the different ways in which
transition terminology, thinking and concepts have been appropriated and applied in various academic elds and countries. Do
we need a common understanding of what is meant by energy
transition? Can we or do we need to agree on what is meant by
energy transitions? For example, is the use of single metrics, such
as the percentage of technology penetration, helpful or limiting?
3.2. The nature of transitions
It was broadly agreed that individual sectoral and service
energy transitions unfold over long periods of time (from 40 to
130 years), while aggregate transitions can take considerably
longersee, for instance, Allen (2012) and Rubio and Folchi
(2012) in this issue. This implies that the agents and institutions
involved change, and often new generations of populations
experience the completion of transitions begun by their parents
or grandparents.
As mentioned earlier, many past energy transitions led to
substantial increases in energy consumptiondiscussed by

Fouquet (2012a), Rutter and Keirstead (2012), and Ruhl

et al.
(2012) in this issue. The transition to a new energy source also
implies left-over resources, partly explaining the ensuing
(slower) growth in the incumbent energy source. In other words,
transitions are both about the successful penetration of new
energy sources, technologies and institutionsas discussed by
Wilson (2012) and Bennett (2012) in this issueand the decline
of othersanalysed by Madureira (2012) and Turnheim and Geels
(2012) also in this issue. Furthermore, the successful penetration
by the winners has usually been preceded by many unsuccessful
new technologies and institutions that have failed to move from
niche to mainstream.
3.3. The drivers of transitions
The next debate was about the drivers of and constraints on
energy transitions. Both demand/end use and supply side/infrastructure issues were seen as important in driving transitions, as
were the roles and agency of consumers, businesses and governments. In particular, the role of incumbents was argued to be
critical. They can either be forces that anticipate and engage in the
change, or seek to maintain the status quo. After all, as mentioned
earlier, the losing incumbents are likely to ght back. Given the
costs of energy technologies and infrastructures, nancial markets and access to capital were seen as essential to enabling
transitions, and the lack of capital a clear constraint. Perhaps not
surprisingly, at times, technological and nancial innovations
have co-evolved. Also, the balance between public and private
capital involved in energy transitions has varied considerably

Editorial / Energy Policy 50 (2012) 17

between countries, and was seen as having had an important

inuence. More generally, the factors that inuenced the destabilisation of existing regimes and energy transitions to develop
were seen as poorly understood.
In addition to many supply-side factors, demand and consumers have played a key role. While the price of energy services
provided to the consumer has been vital, tangible service benets
to the consumer from new technologies may have outweighed
the higher costs, especially at early phases of transitions. Furthermore, trust, social acceptance and the process of domestication of
new technologies have been critical. For example, ensuring that
product demonstrators empathise with users priorities and
problems, as well as values and cultural preferences, have been
important in the adoption of technologies.
The timing of events has been another important factor.
Historical contingency has had a role to play in aiding or
hindering transitions. The existence of complementary (or
obstructing) agents, technologies and institutions at particular
times has been shown to be crucial for some transitions.
In addition, broader intellectual currents and ideological preferences (e.g., laissez-faire or interventionist) at a particular time
have had a major inuence on the types of technologies and
associated institutions that were more likely to be successfully
adopted and supported.
3.4. Differences between past and prospective transitions
It was agreed that it is important to identify both the
similarities and the differences between past and prospective
transitions. There was concern about the nature of current
low carbon technologies and energy sources. First, at present,
existing low carbon technologies are not seen as new general
purpose technologies, i.e., a single generic technology [y] that
initially has much scope for improvement and eventually comes
to be widely used, to have many uses, and to have many spillover
effects (Lipsey et al., 2005, p. 98). Rather, they are seen (by some)
as poor versions of existing technologies (because, for example, of
the intermittency of key sources, like wind, and the larger land
requirements than fossil fuels). Second, future low carbon transitions may not have any new energy carrier (just electricity). Third,
it was not yet clear that low carbon technologies would offer an
improved range of services or quality to consumers. Fourth, there
was expressed uncertainty about what would be the qualitative
benets of a low carbon (and/or more electried) energy system
(i.e., beyond those owing from the use of individual services).
A crucial issue is that, during past energy transitions, there
were clear private benets both for producers and for consumers
in switching to new energy sources and technologies, whereas
these private benets are as yet less obvious for low carbon
energy sources and technologies. Since the transition will contribute towards the public good of avoided climate damage (thus,
there will be a tendency to free-ride) and because of the perceived
urgency of climate change, contrary to most past transitions, a
low carbon transition will need to be deliberately managed or
engineered. Thus, there is a need for qualitative research
into historic purposive transitionsas in Fouquet (2012b) in
this issue.
3.5. Policies related to prospective energy transitions
Many questioned the value and role of policy in past energy
transitions. In many cases, governments do not seem to have
played a highly proactive role in previous transitions, although
further research is needed to unpack their inuence. For the
reasons discussed earlier, most participants considered that a low
carbon transition would require much greater government

encouragement than in most past transitions. This is a clear

challenge in an era when many countries have seen moves away
from state involvement towards privatized and liberalized energy
marketsthe relationship between liberalization and a low
carbon transition is considered in this issue by Pollitt (2012).
Given the urgency of climate change, some felt that the rst
role for government would be to accelerate a possible transition.
But, this would need the willingness to recognise and overcome
the inertia of incumbent energy sectors. A second (related) role is
how to minimise the inconvenience and complexity of a transition to a low carbon energy system. A third role (perhaps in the
context of publicprivate partnerships) would be to support a
diverse portfolio of energy sources and technologies in order to
experiment and explore multiple avenues until the market felt
ready to support a particular path. While being potentially more
costly than picking a winner, this approach might minimize the
risk of getting locked-into an undesirable trajectory. Furthermore,
long term governmental support (i.e., over decades) sends the
signal to inventors and entrepreneurs of a credible and safe
environment in which new energy sources and technologies can
develop and mature. Several participants also stressed their view
that assistance and support should be directed towards transitions in developing countries, where huge growth in energy
services will be key to future energy consumption, living standards and climate change.
Some thought that governments might play a role in recognizing the need for low carbon technologies that exhibit characteristics superior to those of current fossil technologies, in addition
to the low carbon characteristic, and in supporting the R, D and D
to help develop them. A number of participants noted that energy
policy and innovation has systematically been biased towards
supply-side technologies. Yet, a transition may depend upon
nding the best way to engage millions of people and enlist them
in changing their energy consumption behaviour. So, demandside measures (focused at individuals, households and larger
scales) may need to be formulated and introduced. Previous
energy transitions have involved signicant cultural and societal
shifts. As well as helping the availability of new technologies and
emergence of associated actors, governments may well have a
role in stimulating the cultural and social conditions of a low
carbon transition.
3.6. The impact of prospective energy transitions
The low carbon transition was also seen as part of a wider
economic and social transformation, potentially a Third Industrial
Revolution or sixth long wave of economic development
participants nevertheless recognized the signicant challenges
involved, and that are explored in this issue by Pearson and Foxon
(2012). General purpose technologies may help unlock accelerated
transitions, although they might not do so quickly, and they might
not only be found in the energy sector. For instance, the transition
might co-evolve with a materials revolution towards materials that
are cheaper, warmer, more exible and lighter. Crucially, revolutions
are moments when new possibilities and opportunities emerge.
By their very nature, the outcomes of revolutions are unpredictable. Some (especially political) revolutions have led to great
miseries. Others have achieved major improvements for the
majority of humanity. It was noted that past industrial revolutions did cause damage and involved painful transitions for many,
while the benets took decades to reach the population at large.
Ultimately, though, transitions are about the quality of peoples
liveshere and in developing economies, now and in the future.
Thus, it was suggested that a key role of government could be to
act as a benevolent steward of a Third (but this time low carbon)
Industrial Revolution.

Editorial / Energy Policy 50 (2012) 17

4. Outline of this special issue

This special issue presents a number of the papers given
during the workshop to a wider audience. These can be broken
into ve parts: rst, a review of the existing knowledge of energy

transitions (Grubler,
2012); second, an examination of past
transitions in the UK and in international energy systems (Allen,
2012; Madureira, 2012; Turnheim and Geels, 2012); third, a study
of transitions related to oil, transport and urban issues (Rubio and
Folchi, 2012; Fouquet, 2012a; Rutter and Keirstead, 2012); fourth,
using historical transitions as a tool to look at prospective
et al., 2012); and,
transition (Wilson, 2012; Bennett, 2012; Ruhl
fth, the broader issues related to the relationship between
energy transitions, economic growth and government policies
(Pearson and Foxon, 2012; Pollitt, 2012; Fouquet, 2012b).

Grubler
(2012) reviews both the theoretical analysis and
empirical evidence on energy transitions. His review emphasizes
the importance of understanding energy end-use and service
demands, the features of the scaling-up and learning processes
that enable the successful conversion from niche to dominant
technology and industry, and, nally, the inevitably slow nature
of energy transitions. He argues that, although current governments are not providing the appropriate stimulus, policies could
initiate a future energy transition, if the correct levers are used
and institutions formed. He proposes that the keys to effective
energy policy are patience, predictability, credibility, alignment
and documentation of success.
Allen (2012) offers a summary of his extensive historical
analysis of the British Industrial Revolution and of the rst
complete transition from renewable energy sources to fossil fuels.
He argues that scientic and technological developments are
important but not enough to engender transitions to new energy
sources and technologies. The story of this transition involved
a combination of many factorsincluding new technologies (e.g.,
the steam engine and coal grates for chimneys), high wages and
relatively cheaper energy sources (i.e., coal) and capital, and
specic markets (including the market for cotton and Londons
relatively wealthy housing market)coming together to create
demands for technologies for power and heating that could thrive
on the cheap fuel and increase labour productivity. Allen stresses
that consumers and producers needed price incentives and, when
they were offered, they could respond to them. He also emphasizes that past transitions have depended on the development of
appropriate skills and local know-how, and on cooperation as
much as competition. Looking forward, he suggests that the
externality issues raised by climate change mean that fuel and
technology choices carry ramications well beyond the prot and
loss statements of the people deciding them. Consequently,
planning and coordination are essential because purely decentralized decision making will not reach a desirable overall result.
The next two articles show us that transitions are just as much
about the decline of incumbent industries, as about the rise of
new ones. The decline may involve powerful pressure groups,
economic and technological sailing-ship effects, unemployment
and social tensions. Madureira (2012) focuses on one crucial
industry of this ultimately international transition and industrial
revolution. He compares the experiences of iron industries in
different countries, with a particular emphasis on how the
declining charcoal industry reacted to the emergence of coke.
He suggests that during the transition the incumbent industry
may follow a number of different experiences, including rapid
decline or deance and temporary expansion.
In a similar vein, Turnheim and Geels (2012) explore the
destabilisation and decline of an incumbent industry, and illustrate the application of their analytical approach by applying it to
the experiences of the British coal industry between 1913 and

1967, and then from 1967 to 1997. The destabilisation is seen to

result from a combination of external pressures and internal
reactions. The British coal industrys inability to adjust to new
circumstances (because it was locked into the old regime) was
instrumental in its destabilisation and ultimate decline. Using a
multi-dimensional framework, the authors show that, although
economic and technical factors may drive external pressures,
political, social and cultural factors play a pivotal role in directing
the pressures and determining the reactions to them. These
experiences offer some important lessons for the way fossil fuel
industries may react to demands for regime changes towards a
low carbon economy and how governments might aid the
transformation of the energy system.
Rubio and Folchi (2012) present evidence on the energy
transitions from coal to oil for 20 Latin American countries
over the rst half of the 20th century. They argue that these
small energy consumers had earlier and faster transitions than
leading nations. By outlining a whole series of energy transitions,
they identify a number of different energy transition processes.
Factors such as domestic energy resources, the size of the internal
market for energy services, trade relations and policy decisions
have been important in determining the nature and speed of
the transitions experienced. They suggest that the lessons will
be particularly relevant for understanding the way in which nonpioneering countries might adopt low carbon energy sources and
technologies.
Fouquet (2012a) presents estimates of the trends in income and
price elasticities and offers insights for the future growth in transport
use, with particular emphasis on the impact of energy and technological transitions. He proposes that, although historically energy
transitions led to dramatic increases in absolute energy consumption,
this response has depended on the phase of economic development a
particular economy is in (at the time of the transition) and on the
access to and cost of energy services in the country. He shows that
elasticities decline with higher levels of GDP per capita implying that
future energy and technological transitions may not increase energy
consumption in the way experienced following transitions in the
nineteenth century. However, he suggests that future energy and
technological transitions may delay declining trends in elasticities,
thus implying higher levels of energy consumption than in the
absence of transitions.
Rutter and Keirstead (2012) focus on the evolution of urban
energy systems, from settlements associated with the agricultural
revolution to the modern metropolis. They identify a number of
trends in their evolution, such as the increasing efciency of
energy use to meet urban energy service needs, the growing
organizational and technological complexity of the urban energy
system, the co-evolution of the energy system with other technological and institutional innovations, and the inuence of
authorities broader strategic interests upon the urban energy
system. The authors propose that these trends are likely to
continue. Given the global tendency towards urbanisation, the
successful pursuit of prospective energy transitions is likely to
depend on being aligned with these trends.
Wilson (2012) provides a new analysis of the processes of upscaling of technologies, which are fundamental for the successful
transition to new energy sources and technologies. He shows that
learning curves tend to ignore the fact that cost reductions are the
joint result of unit scaling and industry scaling, and that unit
scaling usually precedes industry scaling. A crucial lesson from
the analysis is that policy-makers seeking to promote transitions
in energy sources and technologies must take care of the upscaling process, ensuring sufcient time for a formative phase of
experimentation and small-scale development and taking account
of the relationship between unit and industrial scaling, before
pushing for the expansion of a particular industry.

Editorial / Energy Policy 50 (2012) 17

Despite the perils of picking winners, Bennett (2012) presents

a methodology for identifying successful energy sources or
technologies in a low carbon transition. Using this methodology,
he provides a case study of the prospective transition towards
renewable raw material (RRM) use in the production of liquid
fuels and organic chemicals in the UK. The method involves
incorporating the insights from relevant historical case studies
and interviews about the perceptions and expectations of actors
into an analysis of how both exogenous factors and internal
organizational pressures inuence prospective transitions. This
analysis identies some of the ways in which political, social and
cultural factors inuence transitions, and offers an empirical basis
for the analysis of past transitions to inform scenarios for the
future, which could assist policy-makers interested in guiding
prospective energy transitions.

Ruhl
et al. (2012) analyse the evolution of energy intensity
over the last two hundred years to identify possible trends in
future energy consumption. They focus on the inuences that
industrialisation processes have had on energy intensities.
Focussing exclusively on modern energy sources, they conrm
the upward trends in energy intensity associated with industrialisation, and declining trends afterwards. One of the implications
they observe is that, especially since the 1990s, there has been a
convergence in energy intensities between developed and industrialising economies at ever lower global values. This supports the
expectation that the growth in energy consumption over the next
20 years will be in industrialising economies. The authors also
argue that, given the trends in energy intensity they identify, per
capita growth in energy consumption from 20102030 should not
be materially different from the period 19701990, although that
was characterized by higher population and lower economic
growth rates.
Pearson and Foxon (2012) explore recent suggestions that a
low carbon transition offers challenges and might yield economic
benets comparable to those of previous industrial revolutions. In
order to do so, they analyse the factors that enabled and sustained
past industrial revolutions, and the role of general purpose
technologies in stimulating and sustaining them. They conclude
that while achieving a low carbon transition may require societal
changes on a scale comparable with those of previous industrial
revolutions this transition does not yet resemble previous high
carbon revolutions. However, they propose that while appropriate
government intervention, consistent and coherent carbon pricing
and support for innovation might be able to create incentives
analogous to some of those that drove the First Industrial
Revolution, an accelerated and different form of revolution would
be needed to meet the urgent needs of climate stabilisation.
Pollitt (2012) places the period of energy privatisation and
liberalisation (i.e., an example of a major energy policy transition)
which began in the 1980s within a wider historical and international perspective, in order to offer lessons for prospective
transitions to a low carbon energy system. He questions whether
there have been direct benets to households from the liberalisation process. However, he found that the liberalisation process,
which included industrial privatisation and regulation, has signicantly improved the governance of monopoly utilities,
enhanced the prospects for competition and innovation, and
enabled the creation of policy instruments for environmental
emissions control. By separating the State and energy industries,
an added benet from liberalisation has been the greater public
scrutiny imposed on energy policy. While he proposes that
certain features of liberalised energy market may increase the
likelihood of moving the economy towards a low carbon transition, he does not argue that a liberalised energy system is the
only system that will deliver a low carbon transition. Instead,
he nds that, irrespective of the system, the central issue will be

the willingness of societies to bear the costs of a transition to a

low carbon economy.
Fouquet (2012b) investigates attempts to instigate transitions
where the benets of the transition result from the increased
provision of a public good (rather than private benets to the
consumer, as is the case in most energy transitions). He analyses
the demand for improvements in air quality in Britain and the
process by which it has led to environmental legislation, potentially driving transitions to low polluting energy sources. In
particular, he shows that while environmental campaigners may
manage to get draft legislation introduced, industrialists may
manage to weaken the Parliamentary bills effectiveness and its
enforcement. Nevertheless, each time demands for environmental
improvements are made, they send signals both to government
(to introduce effective legislation) and to polluters (that they
should seek low pollution solutions and, if they nd sufciently
cheap alternatives, to introduce them rather than lobby against
the bill and its enforcement). Thus, the development of effective
and sustained environmental legislation is not a one-off game,
but rather an iterative series of demands (and opposition) that
can take decades or centuries to unfold, eventually leading to a
sufciently low-cost solution for polluters to stop opposing the
demands (or possibly the disappearance of the problem, because
of the decline of the polluting industries). The demand for climate
stabilisation and the development of successful climate policies,
he suggests, are likely to follow a similarly protracted course.
This series of articles on past energy transitions sought to offer
insights into how history might help us better appreciate the
nature, challenges and opportunities of prospective transitions
and the policies that might help achieve them. The papers offer no
more than a window onto the knowledge that can be gained from
the analysis of past transitions. It is hoped that the Cardiff
workshop and this special issue will inspire many more to use
the wealth of historical evidence to aid our understanding of
prospective low carbon transitions.

Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all those involved in the April
2011 Past and Prospective Energy Transitions Workshop: Insights
from Experience held at Cardiff University, with expert support
from the UK Energy Research Centres Meeting Place team. The
enthusiastic participants were Bob Allen, Malek Al-Chalabi, Paul
Appleby, Stathis Arapostathis, Simon Bennett, Elke Bruns, Andy
Boston, Ujjayant Chakrovorty, Anna Carlsson-Hyslop, Cutler
Cleveland, Malcolm Eames, David Elmes, Timothy Foxon, Maria

Gradillas, Arnulf Grubler,

Geoff Hammond, William Hausman,
Marie-Helene Hubert, Nick Hughes, Astrid Kander, Nuno Luis
Madureira, Catherine Mitchell, Alexander Naumov, Nick Pidgeon,
Michael Pollitt, Paul Rutter, Mark Schaffer, Iain Souter, Fred
Steward, Bruno Turnheim, Bram Verhees, Benjamin Warr, Jim
Watson, Charlie Wilson and Mark Winskel. The excellent coorganisers and advisers were Timothy Cooper, Sarah Gardner,
Karen John, Catherine Mitchell, Jennifer Otoadese and Mark
Winskel. We are also grateful for the generous support from the
UKERC Meeting Place, the EPSRC/E.ON UK funded Transition Pathways project (Grant EP/F022832/1), and the Energy Security in a
Multipolar World research cluster (Grant EP/G041016/1). The
authors are solely responsible for the views expressed here, as
well as all errors and omissions.
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Roger Fouquet n
Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) and IKERBASQUE
(Basque Foundation for Science), Spain
E-mail address: roger.fouquet@bc3research.org

Peter J.G. Pearson

Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI), Cardiff University, UK
E-mail address: pearsonpj@cardiff.ac.uk
Received 8 September 2011
Available online 15 September 2012

Corresponding author.