Anyone interested in the politics of energy today would do well to study the world’s first energy revolution, one that is often called the age of steam. What you see is a transition between two forms of what is now called dispatchable energy; that is, energy you can control, rely on and send to places. There was always non-dispatchable energy, like wind and water, but for many applications and a growing economy this wouldn’t suffice. The original form of dispatchable energy was muscle power, often forced muscle power. But around the second half of the 19th century dispatchable power increasingly looks like steam and ... (full story)