. @TheEconomist just published a nice chart of our energy history based on Vaclav Smil’s work. https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2020/05/23/the-worlds-energy-system-must-be-transformed-completely

I've been researching energy transitions lately, so here is a thread in the hope that this topic may give us respite from the pandemic news stream.

The main message of the figure is that energy transitions are slow, a common takeaway from Smil’s research.

But why are the slow? I recently finished Smil’s “Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects. In this thread, I will be primarily summarizing findings therein.

What do we mean by energy transitions? Smil, and others, often mean the transition from a technology emerging on the scene to when it represents a significant % (eg 50%) of its market. Why this definition? Historically, a technology rarely comes to represent ~100% of a system.