AHC: Renewable energy Industrial Revolution?

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Deleted member 114175

The challenge is to have wind, water, and biofuels such as ethanol, become the dominant energy sources in the Industrial Revolution until at least 1920 (though I imagine if coal and oil don't outpace renewables until 1920, then renewables will be efficient enough that they are never outpaced, coal and oil would be used for specialty applications).

How would this affect long term economic and political developments?
 
There seems to be no clear consensus on what exactly are all the necessary requirements for the industrial revolution but one factor usually cited is the increasing exploitation of fossil fuels. Coal gives so much more energy produced versus energy expended that it is really a tough ask to do without it.
Wind is very inefficient if all you have is early industrial tech to collect it and need to use it in direct-drive form rather than for electricity generation.
Biofuel is probably a non-starter if you have no artificial fertiliser to boost output, no modern hybrid plants to grow, and have to harvest with muscle power. You get a burst of deforestation and then you are done.
Hydro is probably the most realistic but then you are very geographically constrained and run into some of the same challenges as with wind, you have to have your industry proximate to the energy source or else build an eye-popping hydraulic power distribution system.

I can well imagine that a renewable industrial revolution has to wait another 150 years vs the dirty one.
 

Anzû

Gone Fishin'
In the time where British capitalists in the cotton industry (leader of the industrial revolution) switched from investing in water to steam power, the consensus was strong that water power was cheaper and more abundant than steam. England's water potential was nowhere near tapped.

The industrial revolution, that is self-sustaining growth that detached from labour intensive and became capital intensive, started in the 1780s with the Arkwright mills... the transition to mostly investing in steam engines came in 1830.

The advantage was less to do with steam engines being more powerful or cheaper, and more to do with labour and the ability of capitalists to cooperate.

On the first count. Good sites for waterwheels were often in the countryside. You needed to either keep captive labour (the apprentice system, which found very low motivation workers and people escaping all the time, plus extra costs of room and board etc), or lure labour (cotton colonies, where you paid high wages and set up schools, cottages etc etc)- local labour is in short supply and is not willing to submit to wage labour and factory discipline. Either option are very expensive. Steam engines go where you want, in the teeming towns where people were increasingly used to the masters and had no alternative but wage labour.
This became more severe after the factory acts and labour victories in the 1830s and 1840s, which limited working hours and the ability to make up time- so if your stream was irregular you could not call people back to work when it starts going good. Steam did not have this issue.

On the second count. Robert Thom, and all of New England, demonstrated that you could keep expanding water power by entering into cooperative reservoir arrangements. Thom's ideas got rejected by established cotton capitalists, as they loved the power and cheapness that it offered, but couldn't stomach sticking to a schedule of opening gates, couldn't work with people upstream, couldn't share responsibility. The New England capitalists were able to come into sites and monopolise them, setting up these reservoirs without the issue of cooperation, but ran into the same issues as things scaled up, over-production became an issue and people kept trying to expand.

Thom-esque systems would let you bypass the first issue by keeping things concentrated and regular, and reap the benefits of agglomeration too. But capitalists locked in intense competition could not work together like this, and switched to coal.

Without coal, the industrial revolution would have been able to go ahead- without the option for coal, the capitalists would have gone with the reservoir systems as the alternative was failure. This likely means we get more consolidated bigger companies earlier, or more state involvement in industrial countries, as there is this need for large scale cooperation that wasn't present in OTL. It would have initially been limited to where there is waterheads, not where there is coal, but in the long run hydroelectricity and geothermal electricity would have allowed it to spread widely- nuclear power would be very significant once it is available, as it frees you from the land.
 
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Deleted member 114175

On the second count. Robert Thom, and all of New England, demonstrated that you could keep expanding water power by entering into cooperative reservoir arrangements. Thom's ideas got rejected by established cotton capitalists, as they loved the power and cheapness that it offered, but couldn't stomach sticking to a schedule of opening gates, couldn't work with people upstream, couldn't share responsibility. The New England capitalists were able to come into sites and monopolise them, setting up these reservoirs without the issue of cooperation, but ran into the same issues as things scaled up, over-production became an issue and people kept trying to expand.

Thom-esque systems would let you bypass the first issue by keeping things concentrated and regular, and reap the benefits of agglomeration too. But capitalists locked in intense competition could not work together like this, and switched to coal.

Without coal, the industrial revolution would have been able to go ahead- without the option for coal, the capitalists would have gone with the reservoir systems as the alternative was failure. This likely means we get more consolidated bigger companies earlier, or more state involvement in industrial countries, as there is this need for large scale cooperation that wasn't present in OTL. It would have initially been limited to where there is waterheads, not where there is coal, but in the long run hydroelectricity and geothermal electricity would have allowed it to spread widely- nuclear power would be very significant once it is available, as it frees you from the land.
Very interesting and well written post. What could create the regulatory background for the state intervention in cooperative reservoir agreements? Perhaps an expansion of tide mills into tide-powered factories, so the shipping-oriented state is regulating reservoirs and maritime traffic early on? Or maybe a country with very long standing water power like the Netherlands writes its commerce and business laws into English law which then enforces them on New England?
 
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It is only the last few years that solar has been cheaper than coal power and this is with vast improvements in highly sophisticated battery technology and much of the cheap coal deposits being depleted. Onshore wind is competitive but has a major problem in that it takes up vast amounts of physical space, which does not easily exist in Europe, and again needs high quality battery technology. Biofuels are a boondoggle that only exist due to vast subsidies and mandates from the political power of the agriculture lobby. Tidal power needs very sophisticated technology and they still can't figure out how to keep the maintenance cost reasonable due to salt water being so destructive. Hydro power can be cost competitive but only when you have a big enough river volume over a big enough mountain drop, so can't produce the volume of energy needed. And it also needs an electricity grid to be useful.

Meanwhile coal was abundant, cheap, easily transportable and just needs to be thrown in a fire by a steam engine to work.
 
It is only the last few years that solar has been cheaper than coal power and this is with vast improvements in highly sophisticated battery technology and much of the cheap coal deposits being depleted. Onshore wind is competitive but has a major problem in that it takes up vast amounts of physical space, which does not easily exist in Europe, and again needs high quality battery technology. Biofuels are a boondoggle that only exist due to vast subsidies and mandates from the political power of the agriculture lobby. Tidal power needs very sophisticated technology and they still can't figure out how to keep the maintenance cost reasonable due to salt water being so destructive. Hydro power can be cost competitive but only when you have a big enough river volume over a big enough mountain drop, so can't produce the volume of energy needed. And it also needs an electricity grid to be useful.

Meanwhile coal was abundant, cheap, easily transportable and just needs to be thrown in a fire by a steam engine to work.
And the hydropower is not quite harmless: its extensive usage in the former SU resulted in the noticeable climate changes, loss of the valuable agricultural lands and probably some other problems (like fish migration). It is not necessary to have a big mountain drop but alternative is creation of the big water reservoirs with all related consequences (see above). IIRC, the first system of the industrial usage of the hydropower in Russia happened in the XIX century on Demidov’s metallurgic plants (I may be wrong on that): the existing plant was located some distance away from the water and the system was transferring power by a very long mechanical crankshaft (hopefully, I’m using the right term). Steam engine proved to be cheaper, more reliable and more efficient.

Solar (besides what you wrote) is not completely harmless either: a big field of the batteries is heating the air and if it is big enough, this can be a problem. Then, outside the desert and semi desert areas, it is not quite reliable: what are you going to do during the rainy season?

It is probably worth noticing that sci-fi of the mid-/late XIX was making a great impact on the electric means of the transportation (Jules Verne liked it 🤪) but it was usually received from the batteries recharged by some not quite clear way.
 
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'You can either make bleach or you cannot. If you make bleach you can have an industrial revolution and if you cannot make bleach you cannot have an industrial revolution,' said Northcote Parkinson's history teacher. We could make bleach with just renewable energy. Railroads? Instead of a dead Irish buried every mile of cutting, we'd have a hundred. Gradients would be hugely important, and we'd be burning down whole forests to feed the locomotives. Canals would stay important through 1920. Sailing ships might have a windmill on the mizzenmast and a stern paddlewheel.
 
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Solar cells were first invented in the 19th century, so they can't start an industrial revolution, but with hydroelectricity/wind power fueled industry they'd make a good supplement. All the ways people would be exploiting hydraulics would work very well with solar power in terms of pumped storage reservoirs. As for how good you could make a solar panel with early 20th century tech assuming the incentive was there I'm not sure. Odds are good there'd be huge investment in nuclear energy since TTL's solar panels will still be too limiting and the best locations for them are too remote.
 
Solar cells were first invented in the 19th century, so they can't start an industrial revolution, but with hydroelectricity/wind power fueled industry they'd make a good supplement. All the ways people would be exploiting hydraulics would work very well with solar power in terms of pumped storage reservoirs. As for how good you could make a solar panel with early 20th century tech assuming the incentive was there I'm not sure. Odds are good there'd be huge investment in nuclear energy since TTL's solar panels will still be too limiting and the best locations for them are too remote.
Making photovoltaic cells is of course completely implausible/impossible for an initial industrial revolution, but you're forgetting another type: Solar thermal.

As in, literally a bunch of mirrors pointing the sun at a tower, which uses the heat generated to make steam.

you could absolutely make such a power plant with that era's technology, though it would be expensive I admit, mostly in initial cost and the labor for moving all of the mirrors daily.
 
The first Industrial Revolution was mostly powered by watermills, with coal powered machinery only producing more energy in the 1840’s (for the UK).

Water had some advantages over coal, it was more consistent and unlike coal water was a near free fuel. However, water mills were dependent on streams and rivers and could not just be placed among Urban centres were the workers were located.

There were a few solutions to this, however that would require large infrastructure investment and cooperation under the guidance of a civil authority. Why? Because canals and reservoirs would have the be dug, and if a factory was downstream they would be receive less water power later than their competitors, which factory owners would not like. Hence a civil authority to manage cooperation between factory owners

There was a Scottish civil engineer called Robert Thom who designed an ingenious system to divide water over a large area in a consistent and controlled manner, I don’t recall how, but his infrastructure project was created during a financial crash. So altough his project was funded and made loads of money it never fully took off.

So a possible way to make a cleaner Industrial Revolution happen is to have Robert Thom’s infrastructure blueprint for water mills spread across the world and aid in having water mills as the primary generators of energy.

Ofc coal will still be used for trains and such but this is a start.

Edit: my entire point has already been made by @Anzû lmao

Anyway, how could we achieve this? Stronger government intervention, specifically to build and manage the water infrastructure, could have gotten the required infrastructure off the ground. Meanwhile another pod could be that Robert Thom’s project in Greenock gains more funding, and is thus an even more successful project during a time when the economy crashed (1825ish) this might incentive many industrialists to stay with water power
 
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Without coal, the industrial revolution would have been able to go ahead- without the option for coal, the capitalists would have gone with the reservoir systems as the alternative was failure. This likely means we get more consolidated bigger companies earlier, or more state involvement in industrial countries, as there is this need for large scale cooperation that wasn't present in OTL. It would have initially been limited to where there is waterheads, not where there is coal, but in the long run hydroelectricity and geothermal electricity would have allowed it to spread widely- nuclear power would be very significant once it is available, as it frees you from the land.
An industrial hydraulic empire would be pretty cool.

Would a human-powered industrial revolution be feasible? Simply get convicts, the unemployed, poor people, and similar to walk on giant treadmills hooked up to dynamos. Though I'm not sure how much electricity it would generate.
 
An industrial hydraulic empire would be pretty cool.

Would a human-powered industrial revolution be feasible? Simply get convicts, the unemployed, poor people, and similar to walk on giant treadmills hooked up to dynamos. Though I'm not sure how much electricity it would generate.

Although human-powered electricity might be feasible, a industrial revolution on these terms wouldn't, because that would simply fit within the energy economy pre-modern societies already used - most forms of work were done by humans or animals, and it was necessary to feed them so they could work, which meant that ultimately, most energy it used came from the land. small amounts of wind and water power were also used, but only small amounts.

One of the things that made the industrial revolution, well, a revolution, is that then you have the harnessing of other forms of energy that don't fit into the agricultural energy economy and ultimately made it obsolete - when it comes to generating electricity, you'll need far less food (and land) to create and operate a steam boiler than to use human-powered electricity generation to create the same level of energy a boiler-powered dynamo would.
 
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Although human-powered electricity might be feasible, a industrial revolution on these terms wouldn't, because that would simply fit within the energy economy pre-modern societies already used - most forms of work were done by humans or animals, and it was necessary to feed them so they could work, which meant that ultimately, most energy it used came from the land. small amounts of wind and water power were also used, but only small amounts.
True, it wouldn't be very similar to OTL's Industrial Revolution. Though I wonder how much electricity could be generated this way -- enough for electrical appliances in ordinary people's houses? Or just enough for a few industrial processes?
 
True, it wouldn't be very similar to OTL's Industrial Revolution. Though I wonder how much electricity could be generated this way -- enough for electrical appliances in ordinary people's houses? Or just enough for a few industrial processes?
I can't see it generating more than a bank of exercise-bike style dynamos, honestly.

After a quick google, it looks as though one person on a bike dynamo, with moderate peddling can generate about 100 watts, with a fit person maybe generating as much as 200 watts. For comparison, that's about 0.134 to 0.268 horsepower.

Steam engines can generate hundreds of horsepower, if not thousands, depending on size and efficiency.
 
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