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CfP: European Energy Shortages during the Short Coal Age (1860-1960), online at KTH

Aliaksandr Piahanau and Per Högselius are organising an online workshop based at our division at KTH on 1 February 2023. Our colleagues are inviting scholars from around the world to discuss the “European Energy Shortages during the Short Coal Age (1869-1960)”. Of course, the workshop hits the zeitgeist, as current rearranging energy systems take discussions about fossil energy shortages in Europe to the forefront of the public discourse. Below you find the call for papers both as text and as a PDF for download. Please consider applying!

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Call for Papers for an online workshop at KTH Royal Institute of Technology

European Energy Shortages during the Short Coal Age

(1860-1960)

Figure 1. Primary Energy Consumption in Europe. Source: Fouquet (2016).

Date: 1 February 2023

Format: online

Objective: a workshop with the intention to produce a special issue or an edited volume

The winter of 2022-2023 in Europe may become the harshest since 1944 due to fuel and electricity scarcity. This is an obvious moment for revisiting historical energy shortages. The proposed workshop will target the period of repeated fuel shortages in Europe from roughly 1860 to 1960 – the century during which coal dominated European energy supply. Throughout this period coal supplied more than 50 % of all energy (figure 1).

Coal’s supremacy in the European energy balance peaked around the First World War. This dominance was enabled by a small group of leading coal producers: Britain, Germany, and, later, Poland, which exported the fuel to a range of other countries in Europe and beyond. British coal production peaked in 1913 (at nearly 300 million tons) and the number of coal miners reached its maximum in 1919 (at over 1 million). The peak was followed by rapid decline. Germany and other coal-producing countries went down the same path later on. For Europe as a whole, however, coal consumption peaked only in the 1960s (figure 2), after which coal lost its dominant position to oil and gas in relative terms as well. From the 1960s, the European coal consumption entered a lengthy period of decline. We propose to label the period during which coal dominated European energy use – from around 1860 to 1960 – “the Short Coal Age,” challenging the more commonly used periodization in the focus is traditionally on the (Long) Coal Age and its links with the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Steam.

Figure 2. Estimation of energy consumption in Terawatt-hours provided by coal in Europe. Source: OurWorldInData.org

Long-term data on coal consumption and prices show big fluctuations in European coal markets, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. High demand frequently encountered low supply, creating a classical “shortage” situation. Some of the mismatches between demand and supply had disastrous consequences for Europe, as reflected in contemporary public discussions (figure 3). Yet energy historians have so far not addressed the nature of European coal shortages sufficiently. In both scholarly and recent public debates historical coal shortages remain largely overshadowed by the oil shocks of the 1970s. Only a few studies have examined coal scarcity (see, for example, Weiller 1940; Lemenorel 1981; Mayer 1988; Kapstein 1990; Izmestieva 1998; Triebel 2009; Chancerel 2012; Mathis 2018).

This gap calls for interdisciplinary and international research cooperation in order to assess the story of long-term energy shortages in Europe. The participants of the planned workshop are invited to reflect together upon coal shortages, their manifold faces and outcomes, during the centenarian apogee of King Coal’s rule in Europe. The workshop aims to bring together researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds, such as history, energy studies, international relations, the technological and environmental humanities, geography, economics, media studies and anthropology.

We propose to structure the workshop around three theoretical angles. The first angle is the discursive understanding of the shortage phenomena; the second relates to their temporal dynamics; the third concerns their spatial (and geopolitical) effects.

By the discursive angle we mean narratives, arguments and ideas provoked by questions like – what happens when our massive flow of cheap energy suddenly disappears? The British intellectual William S. Jevons warned in his Coal Question (1865) that the coal dependence will menace modern society in near future. Jevons feared that the approaching coal depletion would ruin the industrial way of life in Britain and its international position. Reflecting upon the ideas of scarcity in an industrialised economy, British English coined the term “shortage” as a synonym for “lack” and “scarcity” (used for the first time in 1868). For the next hundred years, this term became primarily used in relation to the lack of labour and of coal. In a retrospective analysis, historians confirmed the importance of shortages for the modern development. On the one hand, coal shortages (and price peaks) pushed energy transition, promoting oil, water power and gas technologies (Fouquet 2016). On the other hand, the ability to stop the coal distribution tremendously empowered modern workers. As Mitchell (2011) famously argued in Carbon Democracy, by menacing or performing “energy sabotage” by acting in the checkpoints of the fossil-fuel-based economy such as mines, railways and ports, coal professionals were able to secure more rights and freedom than any time before. We are interested in deepening this reflection by asking what kind of fears and hopes, challenges and opportunities, coal and its shortages provoked in different contexts.

Figure 3. Word frequency referring to coal shortage. Note the two major peaks in 1919 and 1946. The dates of the first visible peak surged in 1873 and the last in 1971 might serve as alternative brackets for the “Short Coal Age” in Europe. Source: Google books 2019 British English corpus.

Our second theoretical focus is chronological. The uncommon time-frame of 1860-1960 as a single European period offers a possibility to check the long-term patterns where researchers usually look for the discontinuity associated with the two world wars. The focus also reveals that the “Short Coal Age” was a paradoxical period from another point of view. The relative coal abundance between 1860 and 1960 was also perforated by repeated moments of drastic energy scarcity. Ethan B. Kapstein, for example, argued that the late World War II coal shortage in Europe was “the most devastating energy crisis in its modern history” (1990, 17). However, the coal undersupply of 1917-21, which occurred at the peak of European coal dependence, seems to have been even more serious. Smaller coal shortages struck in 1873-4, 1899-1903, 1926 and 1956. This uneven spread of coal shortages, which occurred in times of both peace and war, is another fascinating subject, and we aim to develop a chronological mapping of coal shortages in Europe.

Our third point targets the spatial dimension. Coal supply and its shortages affected different areas in varying degree and unevenly sparked both international competition and cooperation. By accident or not, the “Short Coal Age” in Europe was also a period of intense international confrontations and warfare. The half-century before 1914, when coal was exported in big volumes out of Europe, were the heydays of European imperialism in Africa and Asia. Coal exports assured British domination over the oceans through establishment of coaling stations, which led On Barak to propose the term “coalonialism” (2021). But since 1914, Europe cut its overseas coal exports, increasingly becoming a net coal importing region (figure 4). The two world wars demonstrated that modern total warfare was a kind of state-run competition of endurance, where home-front economy was as important as frontline combat. Military campaign devoured giant portions of energy and its success was largely defined by the amount of coal which one side could mobilize (Tooze 2007). The world wars brought new territorial rearrangements over important coal areas (such as Alsace-Lorraine, the Saar, and Silesia), but also sped up an international cooperation in coal supply on the European level. The Versailles conference of 1919-20 formalised a first international system of coal exchange, which was included in peace treaties (Soutou 1989). Dealing with the ruinous coal shortages, the winning coalitions established the European Coal Commission in 1919 (which later was integrated into the Economic Commission of the League of Nations), and the European Coal Organisation in 1945, later replaced by the much more powerful (and successful) European Community of Coal and Steel in 1951. The transition to an oil-and-gas economy in the 1960s not only freed Europe from the dictate of the coal mining industry, but also, possibly, left international conflicts over coalfields to the past – at least until 2014, when war broke out in Eastern Europe’s chief coal mining centre, located in Ukraine’s Donbass region.

Figure 4. Coal trade balance in Europe, in million ton (exports minus imports; without Russia and Turkey). Data sourced from: B.R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics, Europe. 1750 – 1988. 3d edition. 1992, 465-72.

Most of all, we are interested in studies on coal supply breakdowns and how they affected European coal dependent actors, such as importing countries, industries and urban communities. International organisations or summits, dealing with coal shortages, are also relevant cases. Comparative studies juxtaposing different geographical, temporal or social cases, are particularly welcomed.

Researchers are invited to discuss one of the following topics:

Dynamics. What were the agents and structural forces underlying particular coal shortages? How did the coal shortages directly affect actors and society?

Adaptations. Which strategies were considered and tested in order to improve the energy situation and/or overcome the crisis? What were the short- and long-term results?

Wider impact. Which changes did coal shortages bring in power, economy and social structures? Who were the winners and losers, who was not affected and why? What kind of challenges and opportunities did coal shortages create? How was the European environment affected by energy shortages and attempts to overcome it?

Revelations. How did people understand coal shortages in broader sense? Were coal shortages integrated into a particular narrative or political discourse? To what extent did these shortages affect the dominant ideological assumptions?

Expectations. How did actors and society forecast future coal supply? Which measures were taken in order to avoid new shortages? How effective were these measures during coal shortages?

The workshop is planned to be held online on 1 February 2023. Interested researchers are invited to submit a paper proposal (up to 500 words) and a short bio to Aliaksandr Piahanau (piahanau@gmail.com) by 15 November 2022. Selected speakers will then be asked to submit full papers (up to 8,000 words including references) by 15 January 2022. After the workshop, we hope to turn its papers into a special issue for a major peer-reviewed academic journal, or, alternatively, into an edited volume.

Organisers: Aliaksandr Piahanau, postdoc researcher in energy history (piahanau@gmail.com) and Per Högselius, professor of history of technology (perho@kth.se), KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

 

CfP Short Coal Age as PDF

Baltic Sea Water Talks on Utö

Utö, one of the major islands of the Stockholm archipelago, recently hosted the Baltic Sea Water Talks. David Nilsson, Associate Professor at our division and Director of the WaterCentre@KTH, has been a key participant of this conference. Many researchers, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists have joined to discuss how the island tackles the upcoming challenges of a changing Baltic Sea and ecosystem.

David has written the following report, which was first published on the WaterBlog@KTH on 29 September 2021.

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On pikes and potatoes

On the island Utö in Stockholm’s southern archipelago they grow pikes and potatoes next to each other. You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself!

In the beginning of September I returned to this wonderful spot, along with some 50 academics, entrepreneurs, investors and environmentalists. The occasion that brought us here was the first Baltic Sea Water Talks; a meeting of diverse professionals in search of practical solutions for challenges in the Baltic Sea.

KTH researchers visiting Utö’s famous windmill

People on the island of Utö have always depended on what nature gives, in one way or the other. While this might be said for all of humanity, it is never more obvious than on an island at sea. Already from the 12th century, it was the iron ore on the island that brought prosperity. After the mining was abandoned in the 19th century, all the trees were cut down to supply timber to the growing city of Stockholm. But fish was plenty and by the early 1900s, there were some 70 fishing boats stationed on Utö. Now there is only one part-time fisherman left. Instead, the island has become a popular tourism destination thanks to its unique nature, its heritage and birdlife. Yet again, nature provides the basis for local livelihood. But how do we make life in the archipelago sustainable after centuries of predatory resource extraction?

This is where the pikes and the potatoes come in. Initiativ Utö, a local NGO and also the host of the WaterTalks, has started to build “pike factories”. In these constructed wetlands and estuaries they aim to both restore the fishing stock and reduce nutrient loads. Nutrients in the run-off and sediments are collected through mechanical and biological methods and the estuaries are breeding places for pike. The pikes restore some balance in the local marine ecosystems and attracts sports fishers. The recovered nutrient is used in local small-scale farming, and seems to be particularly good for potatoes.

Restoration work in the estuary

Currently, two research groups from KTH are actively doing research on the pike factory wetlands. A team led by Guna Rajarao Kuttuva looks into monitoring techniques and optimisation of the wetland. Another team led by Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol is investigating the potential of phosporous “mining” from the estuary sediments, where valuable phosphorous could be extracted as a commercial product. Research and innovation like theirs moves us towards “closing the loop” for food production on a whole new scale. Could the polluted seas become a source for valuable and scarce nutrients? Can we move towards a balance with nature and stop exhausting nature’s resources one after the other?

Thomas Hjelm of Initiativ Utö talking to Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol in the wetlands

And most importantly, what to do with the potatoes? For my part, I prefer the Swedish traditional dish “raggmunk”, a type of potato pancake. I can tell you that the Utö potatoes grown on sludge from the pike factory, are particularly well suited for raggmunk. Bon appétit!

Oooh those raggmunks!

Utö-Raggmunkar

10 Utö potatoes

3 eggs

2 dl flour

4 dl milk

1 teaspoon salt

 

Grate potatoes coarsely

Mix egg, flour, salt and milk and add grated potatoes

Form small “beefs” into saucepan and fry on medium-high, rich with butter

Serve with lingonberries

Le chef at work – grating away in the kitchen

STREAMS coming up this week!

This week the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the division is hosting the long-awaited STREAMS-Conference (STREAMS-Transformative Environmental Humanities) digitally in Stockholm.

 

We are delighted that despite all the problems the organising committee had encountered during the Covid-19-pandemic the conference can finally take place – albeit only in a virtual format. The team has put together a very differentiated programme, encompassing a vast array of presentations, films, artwork, keynotes, roundtables and networking events. Scholars of Environmental Humanities, Energy History, Climate Change and the Anthropocene will meet artists, activists (e.g. from Extinction Rebellion Sweden) and editors on the new Streams EventsAIR Virtual Platform to facilitate a great networking experience despite the challenges of the new home-office-normality. The keynote-speakers are among others: Jürgen Renn, Adeline Johns-Putra, Michelle Bastian, Julie Sze, James Ogude and Dipesh Chakrabarty.

Digitising Education – A Reflection

Our division is engaged in multiple forms of teaching. This did not change during the pandemic. The new reality, dominated by working from home and thus increasingly online, forced us to find new ways of teaching.

It was paramount to keep the same level of quality while moving whole courses online and dealing with the restrictions, such digitised interactions entail. By transferring courses online, which usually would include a mixture of lectures, small-group seminars and excursions, many challenges came up.

First of all, we needed to ensure that basic functions of our courses could be established online and that the continuation of our students’ education was ensured. During the first months of the pandemic, this was based a lot on improvisation and on an extensive usage of already existing infrastructure, such as Canvas, the course web and, especially, tons of emails. Luckily, IT-support made Zoom very quickly available. The initial transition happened surprisingly smooth.

Schüler, Eingabe, Tastatur, Text, Frau, Start, Geschäft

But, as the saying goes, at every level there is another devil: problems occurred, while time progressed and experiences in online teaching added up. How can you ensure that your students can learn in the best way possible if you lose to a big extent the direct contact with them? How can you keep concentration and interest levels high if zoom-fatigued individuals challenged with all kinds of non-education related issues were under more and more pressure? How could you, as a teacher or course administrator, deal with the unplanned extra work resulting from unforeseen additional tasks?

These were only some questions which came up during the last year. Our division was able to develop some strategies to cope and thus fared fairly well during this time. To communicate and discuss our experiences, four scholars of our division have taken part in this year’s KTH SoTL: Learning Spaces Conference. The following is a short report on their panel.

Decorative: KTH SOTL Logo, KTH SoTL 2021: Learning Spaces

Per Högselius (head of undergraduate teaching), Kati Lindström (course responsible in Energy Systems in Society and in History of Science and Technology, teacher in Perspectives on Science, Technology and Landscape in Time and Space), Katarina Larsen (Course responsible in Swedish Society and teacher in Gender and Technology) and Siegfried Evens (course coordinator in Swedish Society, Culture and Industry in Historical Perspective and teacher in Energy Systems in Society) presented together our experiences at the division.

Per began with an overview over our various courses we offered during the last year. It was a broad range, reaching from Swedish perspectives on progress, industrialisation and system-approaches, over energy and geopolitics, to political ecology, science fiction and gender in technology.

Kati followed with small meta-studies on our e-learning performance. One critical point was here the usage of Canvas, which as a course administrating tool, had maybe outlived itself in the current circumstances. It became important to use as much diversity as possible, by including audio, video, standard presentations and possibilities for interaction as well as discussions among the students. It became also clear that students were highly versed in digital tools but not necessarily in the humanities’ ways of reading and writing texts. This discrepancy needed to be bridged by teachers and used technology. There were already a lot of tools being used, some of which were Mentimeter, Kahoot and Padlet.

Katarina continued with introducing two innovative ways in teaching. One was the distance teaching walk done with small groups of students as replacement for a regularly scheduled excursion and the other a specific mapping exercise linked to this walk done in Nearpod. By working in our Swedish Society Course, Katarina introduced this new form of excursion by building upon smartphones’ ability to using geographic locating devices. In this way, students could walk across the area of Liljeholmen and get specific tasks and information at respective locations. Later on during the seminar, students could then draw their ideas for improved urban planning in this area on a map presented in Nearpod. Thus it was possible for students to experience this excursion and an important part of the course, even though big-group excursions had to be cancelled. It was on the outside and student groups did not exceed about 5 people at a time.

Siegfried rounded up the panel with the presentation of the interactive teaching tool Nearpod. This tool, which he introduced in our Swedish Society Course first, enables teachers and students to interact with each other during a presentation. In this way, the limitations of power point are easily overcome. We only got positive feedback from our students on this, so Siegfried went along and showed our experiences to colleagues from other schools. From my personal experience, Nearpod was very important in diversifying our ability as teachers in engaging with the students digitally. Its use should therefore be promoted.

In total, this panel was successful in showing innovative ways on how to improve our digitised forms of teaching. At this stage, it is important to have an ongoing dialogue with other departments to exchange ideas and reflections. This panel has been a great start for that. As the pandemic continues, digital teaching will stay with us. When eventually real-life teaching will become practice again, the experiences we are collecting right now will turn out very useful in the future. I am sure they will transform contemporary forms of teaching even in a long, and hopefully pandemic-free, perspective.

By Achim Klüppelberg