The politics of solar energy
30 May 2018
Before the industrial revolution, energy supply was not much of a political issue. Virtually all energy was biological, either in the form of human and animal muscle, or wood for burning. The most important exception was wind for water transport. All these energy sources were available without taxation, even if not evenly spread across the globe.
New energy sources was not the trigger for industrialisation, but it soon became necessary. The realisation of how much power steam can exercise, led to the making of a whole lot of fire. If huge deposits of coal and crude oil had not been discovered, steam power would quickly have run out of… well, steam, because there was just so many trees to cut down.
Since roughly 1800 the deposits of these energy sources, together with exploitable mineral resources, determined the destiny of countries, empires, unfortunate peoples living in resource rich areas without the means to profit from it, and fortunate peoples who exactly knew how to do so.
Electricity generation got momentum during the twentieth century. Economies of scale counted. Whether it was the private sector or the state who invested sufficiently to supply a country of electricity, acquired notable power in the process. The same goes for the sophisticated process to produce petroleum products, on which virtually all transport came to depend. Where states do not wield its power by being the suppliers of energy, it has the opportunity to tax it heavily, as production is highly concentrated.