Mapping Energy History

A future transition to clean energy seems less daunting when considered in historical perspective: the United States has undergone multiple radical energy transitions in its past. Until the 1880s, the primary fuel in all major sectors in the United States – residential/commercial, industrial, and transportation – was wood. Over the next century and a half, each sector underwent multiple energy transitions, each involving radical transformations of fuel supply, distribution infrastructure, and in some cases end-use technology. None of these transitions produced an economic crisis, and all involved several-decade timescales. This proposal would fund the expansion of an ongoing project to chart these transformations and the infrastructure built out to support them. The long-term goal is to understand common factors in energy transitions in order to help facilitate a future one. The project is strongly interdisciplinary, involving collaboration between physical science, history, digital media, and digital humanities scholarship. It leverages off several centers and facilities already established at the University of Chicago.

As we look to transforming our energy system, one useful guide is our past: the dramatic energy transitions the U.S. and other countries have already experienced. This project maps out the growth of energy infrastructure and changes in energy use in both U.S. and China, to understand the pace and scale of change. Innovative interdisciplinary digital methods combining archival research and machine vision can give us new windows into the past.

— Liz Moyer, Associate Professor, Geophysical Sciences