All of the great changes in energy use over the past century, writes Sam H. Schurr in a new RFF study, "have made possible essentially new, or enormously improved, ways of performing important economic and social functions. They have accomplished this always in combination with other changes—railroads, automobiles, electric motors, etc.—themselves often made feasible by changes in energy sources or their form.
"The change in the energy base from wood, a limited resource, to coal, which was available in apparently endless amounts, opened the way to the large-scale growth of iron and steel metallurgy. Adequate supplies of iron and steel, in turn, made it possible to revolutionize transportation by building a railroad network. The way was also opened to the ever-expanding production of machines constructed of metal which have provided the foundation for our modern industrial system. Not only did coal support the necessary growth in metals production, it also supplied the large amounts of fuel needed to power locomotives and the machines of industry...
"In the twentieth century, liquid fuels have been fundamental to the growth of automotive transportation, whose impact on the American way of life is beyond any need for description. The impact of electricity is without parallel. It has made possible numerous developments in the field of communications and automatic controls which would otherwise be inconceivable. Also, in industrial plants the substitution of electric motors mounted on machines forgo the older system in which mechanical energy was transmitted by belts powered by a single prime mover has made possible a complete reorganization of product practices.”
In these and other ways cited by Schurr, what first appeared to be a simple substitution of an improved form of energy for an old one has time and time again touched off a whole chain of far more significant—and utterly predictable—developments. This is one of the reasons why he and his colleagues in their forthcoming4 study have limited their forward projections to 1975, just fifteen years from now. It is also the reason why they have little to say about atomic energy, whose chief peaceful use from present indications, is as a substitute fuel generating electricity not likely be economic on any large scale in the United States by 1975. But that only is as things look now. The record of the past does not encourage dogmatism. "It may be," Schurr speculates in mentioning a few of the really long-range possibilities, "that at some date in the distant future nuclear fuels will be looked back upon as the energy source without which the revolutionary transportation system of the space age would have been totally impossible."
From the introduction of Energy in American Economy, 1850–1975, by H. Schurr and Bruce C Netschert in collaboration with Vera F. Eliasberg, Joi Lerner, and Hans H. Landsberg, to be published in November by The John Hopkins Press.
A version of this article appeared in print in the September 1960 issue of Resources magazine.
