by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
Publ: Allen Lane, 2024
In advance of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s generous talk and Q&A for MHSG, our Green Book Club has been reading his recent “gobsmacking” (The Economist) analysis of energy transition – past and future.
You have until 18th March to read the book, when we hope to welcome you all to Muswelll Hill Methodist Church to listen to and question this incredibly insightful historian of science, environment and technology. All details below.
Book review by Dr Alan Morton
“In this book Jean-Baptiste Fressoz takes a novel approach to the history of energy. He debunks the idea there is a series of transitions in the history of energy where one fuel and associated technologies supplants an earlier – wood making way for coal, followed by shifts to oil, gas and now, possibly, renewables. Instead, he explains we have growth – the More and More and More of his title – where new supplies of energy just add to the mix and don’t displace the earlier.
The coming of the railways, replaced stagecoaches, but increased the use of horses – to haul wagons from freight yards to final destination rather than to pull stagecoaches. Similarly, greater use of coal meant an increase in the use of wood – but for pitprops in mines rather than fuel. And the coming of oil meant huge quantities of wood went to make barrels, Rockefeller being one big supplier.
But if energy transitions did not happen, why is the idea current? J-P traces ‘transition’ back to supporters of the nuclear industry around 1970. They fully expected a new technology, the fast breeder reactor, a vast improvement, they hoped, on existing nuclear reactors, would become the easiest and cheapest way to generate electricity. How, then, could we manage to ‘transition’ to a world of abundant and cheap electricity? That ‘transition’ never even began. But the idea stuck and has a new life today in thinking about climate change. How we ‘transition’ away from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of energy, thinking embedded in the climate models of the IPCC and others.
But if transitions did not happen, as J-P maintains, new technologies are just added to the great pile of existing technologies rather than being a ‘great replacement’ for another technology, what does that imply for us today? Perhaps we should just look at what’s happening? There’s been a huge increase in renewables but rather than replace fossil fuel power stations, all the renewable generation has done is reduce the increase in fossil fuel use, rather than reduce overall amounts being used.
Today the large techcos are buying huge amounts of renewables, and even fossil and nuclear power stations, to meet their rapidly increasing demand for power for their datacenters to mine digital currencies or train AI models. Are these socially useful? That energy could be better used for health care, schools, heating people’s homes etc. So maybe there is no transition happening – all we are seeing is more, and more, and even more of the same thing.
I leave the last words to J-B
“Transition is the ideology of capital in the twenty-first century. It turns evil into cure, polluting industries into the green industries of the future, and innovation into our lifeline. Transition puts capital on the right side of the climate battle. Thanks to transition, we’re talking about trajectories to 2100, electric cars and hydrogen-powered aircraft rather than material consumption levels and distribution. Very complex solutions in the future make it impossible to do simple things now. The seductive power of transition is immense: we all need future changes to justify present procrastination. The history of transition, though, and the unsettling sense of déjà vu it engenders should warn us. We must not let the technological promises of carbon-free material abundance repeat themselves again and again: after crossing the 2°C threshold in the second-half of this century, they will just as surely lead us towards greater perils.” (p.220)
Read the book and act on its insights!
And come to his zoom talk on 18 March!”
Author livestream listings info …
What: a livestream talk from Paris with author Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, on his recent book: More & More & More, an All-Consuming History of Energy, followed by a Q&A and refreshments
When: Tuesday 18th March 2025, 7.30pm – 8.30pm
Livestream link: here
Entry: Free to all
Author bio …
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science, technology and the environment. Previously lecturer at Imperial College London (CHOSTM) he is now a CNRS researcher in Paris. He is the author of several books which have been recently translated : The Shock of the Anthropocene, Verso, 2016, Happy Apocalypse. A History of Technological Risk, Verso, 2024, Chaos in the Heavens, Verso, 2024 and More and more and more. An All Consuming History of Energy, Penguin, 2024.
