AHC: Renewable powered British/French Empire

Albert.Nik

Banned
This isn't exactly for a detailed discussion. I want some leads for an another timeline I am making. I need some list of possible PODs for the British or French Empire to run on decentralised and Sustainable energy that would have effects on their settled and resultant countries later in a highly positive way. So can anyone think of a possible POD? No Oil/Coal allowed in any stage after the first round of mass manufacturing. The source and the process should be sustainable,versatile and highly efficient. Any invention anywhere by anyone and anyhow?
 
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I dont see it with the technology of the time. At least not all of your goals at the same time.

Your best fit would be developing biofuels to surplant fossil fuels, but to do that i think you'd need a relatively centralized production process.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
You could certainly have some renewable energy - solar thermal generators were invented during this time, as were hydroelectric power plants. Coal (and later oil) was just easier to do.

Energy generation at the time was also decentralised, with towns and cities having their own power plants and town gas plants.
Thanks! Noted points! Coal and Oil would have no place or little place in my timeline. At least,after the first round of the Industrial revolution. I will plan the timeline pathway accordingly.
 
Thanks! Noted points! Coal and Oil would have no place or little place in my timeline. At least,after the first round of the Industrial revolution. I will plan the timeline pathway accordingly.

That will be difficult. The amount of energy available in coal and oil is very high, and is technically feasible for that era. Whilst other technologies - solar cells and fuel cells - may also have existed during this period, they aren't going to be as efficient in producing energy given the technology at the time.

You might be better off going with more widespread use of Stirling engines, at least at first.

BTW - are you just seeking to remove coal and oil as sources of energy? Because both have many other industrial uses, especially things like coal tar.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
That will be difficult. The amount of energy available in coal and oil is very high, and is technically feasible for that era. Whilst other technologies - solar cells and fuel cells - may also have existed during this period, they aren't going to be as efficient in producing energy given the technology at the time.

You might be better off going with more widespread use of Stirling engines, at least at first.

BTW - are you just seeking to remove coal and oil as sources of energy? Because both have many other industrial uses, especially things like coal tar.
I would be interested in a Nuclear Fusion angle if really possible. From a Purely Scientific point of view,it is actually possible but engineering problems have prevented it. I know Solar has a problem of being too spread out and hence difficult and inefficient as of now. No I don't mean not using Coal and Oil for other purposes. This thread doesn't concern Coal tar.
 
If we can’t create net energy positive nuclear fusion in the modern day, with our advanced understanding of subatomic physics, how the hell do you expect it to occur before we had even the most basic understanding of the atom? And even if you just assume that all those discoveries happened earlier, most all of them require ready access to large amounts of energy, energy which this hypothetical civilization just flat out wouldn’t have access to
 
Solar thermal is probably out in Britain, but it might work in eg the south of France.

Cultivating fast growing trees, eg poplar and pine, together with anaerobic destructive distillation in a retort or other closed container, rather than the rather wasteful traditional methods, might give enough charcoal that mineral coal isn't needed. It's still going to limit how much smelting you can do.
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Anaerobic pyrolysis
That's the phrase I was looking for.
 
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One obvious way to do this would be to have some coal and oilfields not be discovered ITTL (though I'm not sure how plausible this would be), making fossil fuels scarcer and consequently stimulating greater use of biofuels and the like.

After the Agricultural Revolution, there was pretty much enough food (in developed countries) that famine was no longer an issue, so I could see extra farmland being turned over to biofuels instead of food. Of course, this would have further effects -- most obviously that the population would be lower (because less food), and consequently technological growth would be slower (because there would be fewer people to invent things). Also, landowning would probably continue to be a viable source of wealth for longer, resulting in society as a whole being more conservative and aristocratic in outlook (landowners tend to be big on stability, because it's not like they can pack up and move operations elsewhere like factory owners can). So I think society would end up looking a bit like OTL's early nineteenth century -- industrialised, but with a strong rural and aristocratic influence.
 
One obvious way to do this would be to have some coal and oilfields not be discovered ITTL (though I'm not sure how plausible this would be), making fossil fuels scarcer and consequently stimulating greater use of biofuels and the like.

After the Agricultural Revolution, there was pretty much enough food (in developed countries) that famine was no longer an issue, so I could see extra farmland being turned over to biofuels instead of food. Of course, this would have further effects -- most obviously that the population would be lower (because less food), and consequently technological growth would be slower (because there would be fewer people to invent things). Also, landowning would probably continue to be a viable source of wealth for longer, resulting in society as a whole being more conservative and aristocratic in outlook (landowners tend to be big on stability, because it's not like they can pack up and move operations elsewhere like factory owners can). So I think society would end up looking a bit like OTL's early nineteenth century -- industrialised, but with a strong rural and aristocratic influence.


But in order to reach even the industrialized levels of the 1850s you would need more energy than biofuels could ever provide. And this would be before the great productivity increases that come about from mechanization and synthetic fertilizers. Which pretty much require the increased access to energy and base stock needed for pesticides and fertilizer that fossil fuels provide.
 
if someone could have found a way for tidal power to work, both countries have large coastlines. the result would probably be industrialization would be far more concentrated on the coast and cites like Manchester would never have come about.
 
But in order to reach even the industrialized levels of the 1850s you would need more energy than biofuels could ever provide. And this would be before the great productivity increases that come about from mechanization and synthetic fertilizers. Which pretty much require the increased access to energy and base stock needed for pesticides and fertilizer that fossil fuels provide.

I was thinking earlier in the 1800s (say, Napoleonic Wars-era).
 
In a sense, this was OTL.

Stupidity is the one truly infinitely renewable resource. The expansion of the British Empire was largely powered by stupidity, as most colonies cost Britain more than they returned. Ergo, the British Empire was powered by a renewable resource.
 
It's not a nice possibility, but slaves are renewable, so you can have more work done with raw manpower, which would be enough for small-scale industry if food is cheap enough.
 
Interestingly enough, amongst the first car were electric car
Maybe if more investment are put in battery to make them rechargeable, coal and oil would had a more serious contender ?

There's a reason the internal combustion engine took off whilst electric cars didn't - power.

A vehicle with a gasoline powered engine can be significantly heavier (and thus larger), and can "recharge" (i.e. refuel) much more quickly than an electric car.

If electric cars had been better at the time cars were invented, then they would have won out.
 
There's a reason the internal combustion engine took off whilst electric cars didn't - power.

A vehicle with a gasoline powered engine can be significantly heavier (and thus larger), and can "recharge" (i.e. refuel) much more quickly than an electric car.

If electric cars had been better at the time cars were invented, then they would have won out.


Also because it is significantly easier to improve ICE engines than to improve batteries. Even today with another century of development batteries are only now becoming competitive enough to possibly displace fossil fuel cars. And only then if you are going to use them for a daily commute. Which is what most driving is but any kind of long distance travel will be slowed by the still lengthy recharge times. They aren't even close to the maybe 5-10 minutes if your slow it takes to refill a gasoline powered car.
 
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I wonder how early you could discover radioactivity and the fact it produces heat? So we'd end up with RTGs playing an early role (minor yet important) or maybe radioisotope Sterling engines and this leads to nuclear fission a generation or two earlier which given 40-50 years of development would make coal obsolete by the second half of the 20th century and ideally give us cheap power, or being used for synthetic oil production since presumably this world has the morals and lacks the desire to deal with corrupt Latin American dictators (like some Mexican and Venezuelan regimes) or oppressive Middle Eastern thugs as found in the Persian Gulf and North Africa.
 
Big mega projects i.e. giant canals, aqueducts, and dams for hydro-power would do the trick. If you're looking for early 19th century low tech that is the only way to go. In fact the industrial revolution did start out with water driven textile and trip hammer mills initially before transitioning to steam.
 
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