1836 was a pivotal year for 24-year-old London resident, Charles Dickens. He married Catherine Hogarth, and he released his first novel, ‘The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club’, also known as the ‘Pickwick Papers’, which was a huge success and a publishing phenomenon in its time. That same year, Charles Darwin returned to England after his 5-year ‘Beagle’ voyage. He moved to London and began his journey to develop the theory of evolution. 1836 was also the last full year of the short reign of King William IV, during which the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. William IV’s niece, Alexandrina Victoria, another London resident, was only 17 years old, and although the presumptive heir to the throne, probably didn’t have great expectations that she would be crowned as Queen Victoria quite so soon, within a year. And 1836 London was also the time and place that my house was built.
In 1836, the First Industrial Revolution, which started in Great Britain and spread across continental Europe and the United States, was in full swing. Industry, which today uses nearly 40% of all energy, was then being transformed by mechanisation and steam, and was fuelled by coal. Indeed, during William IV’s reign, coal was the undisputed king of energy, and it still reigns to this day, generating over a third of the world’s electricity. There was a boom in coal mining, and it was abundant and cheap. Coal fuelled homes and factories and even transport - steam locomotives were a very recent breakthrough innovation of the preceding decade. In another contemporary innovation, if you heated coal in closed containers, you could make coal gas. The world’s first gas utility company, the Gas Light and Coke Company, had been established in London in 1812 and coal gas was introduced for the first time for lighting in urban areas (and there are still around 1,500 gas lamps in London today). Coal gas was an early form of natural gas, and it marked the beginning of a shift towards gaseous fuels. But it wasn’t until 1875 that Robert Bunsen’s burner transformed the application of natural gas for heating, and until 1904 that the first central heating system using gas was installed in London. During the 20th century, gas became the second largest generator of the world’s electricity behind coal.
London in 1836 was, thanks to coal, suffering badly from smoke, soot, ash, poor visibility, and sulphurous gas pollution from coal combustion. Mixed with water vapour in the atmosphere, this turned to acid rain that damaged building, monuments, and vegetation. Coal dust and ash runoff further polluted industrial waste and raw sewage in the Thames River, which stank, made fish sick, contaminated drinking water, and hindered navigation. Ash residue that was dumped in landfills contaminated the soil, sickening plants and leaching into groundwater. Air and water pollution in London contributed to respiratory illnesses and outbreaks of disease. Charles Dickens described ‘dense clouds of smoke … the air stifling, and atmosphere oppressive’ in Oliver Twist. This was the air that King William IV was breathing as he had been suffering from bronchitis and heart palpitations in the early 1800s. He had a severe bronchial attack in 1836 that forced leave from royal duties. He died of a chest infection the following year. Burning coal at this time also released carbon dioxide and marked the early stages of humanity’s contribution to global warming.
So, in 2024, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (and maybe even the fifth), presumably we can do better? The UK’s use of coal has reduced from over 50% of all energy consumption as recently as the 1960s to around 3% in the 2020s. Meanwhile, wind, nuclear and other lower carbon energy sources represent around a quarter of energy consumption in the UK today. But oil and gas are the king and queen of the UK’s energy consumption – oil mainly for transport (since cars displaced horses) and gas largely for generating electricity, but almost the same amount of gas is used for heating, hot water, and cooking in homes.
When I bought my 1836-built house last year, I was determined to try to do better, and to test my greater expectations. Having developed and invested in some $2.5 billion of projects designed to reduce the energy, environmental and carbon footprint of buildings, industry and transport and connected to over 50,000 properties through our work at Sustainable Development Capital and the SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust plc, I got to work at home. I changed every lightbulb to LED lamps with a smart control system by Lutron, reducing energy use by over 50%, saying goodbye to the need to climb ladders to change blown bulbs. Indeed the new lights are capable of being turned on and off for security and efficiency reasons from anywhere in the world and at any time. I installed energy efficient appliances, including a heat pump tumble drier from Bosch and I renewed the electric induction cooking hob. Foiled by Westminster Council, which is yet to grant listed building consent for a heat pump despite the enormous amounts of time and money that I have since wasted on lawyers, consultants, and acoustic tests (as covered by a great article by Edward Lucas in The Times last year), I capitulated and replaced my old gas boiler and water cylinder that provided our heating and hot water with Fischer’s excellent electric boiler and phase-change thermal batteries, designed to last 50 years.
100% electric, connected to a 100% renewable energy tariff with Octopus Energy, my electric cars (which help to cut premature lung disease from air pollution) charging outside on Siemens-powered lamp-posts, and delighted with zero emissions and, now, zero gas inside to rattle the pipes with air traps losing us sleep, or to risk giving my family carbon monoxide poisoning, or to accidentally blow up the house, I had only one worry – what happens if the electricity goes down? Just as the thought flashed through my mind and my wife left the house for her Saturday morning errands, the house went dark. Everything went off, even the mains meter. We had no electricity, no heating, no hot water, no internet, no TV, nothing. We were instantly back to the stone (or at least the brick) age.
The house fell absolutely silent inside. The ‘clack-clack’ sound of shoed hooves from the horses walking in the mews outside – just as they would have done in 1836 – cracked like knuckles, or like fingernails drumming on our kitchen table. Neither was desirable, and I knew full well that I could get in quite a lot of trouble for this. Even Pluto the dog looked worried for me.
Now, I insist to this day that this was not my fault. I was backed up, for the most part, by the incredible engineer from our distribution network operator UK Power Networks, who arrived faster than a London ambulance and discovered a 30-amp fuse at the mains, patched together with two pieces of thin and now smoked out copper wire, and replaced it with a 100-amp fuse. But was it my fault? We tried all the appliances and found that the washing machine used more juice that the thermal batteries, so it seemed that I was in the clear, but the thought of my wife – who thankfully had missed all the drama this time – being left in the dark with the kids while I was on a business trip seemed a looming inevitability than I couldn’t afford. What to do? I could spend £10,000 paying UK Power Networks to install a three-phase (or in common English, bigger) electric connection. Or, as it turned out, I could install a much cheaper Tesla Powerwall 2 battery to back up the house, to protect the system from surges or overloads, and even to allow us to buy cheaper electricity at night than during the day. Top it off with a Starlink satellite broadband internet system for £199 (an approved beautifully re-conditioned - or recycled - one, versus £449 new) and I could be off the grid if it goes down to boot. Efficient, renewable, lower carbon, lower cost and more secure. Back to the future.
So, if this is what we can do at home, how is the rest of the world getting on with the clean energy revolution?
In summary, we can and should have greater expectations.
Despite nearly 40% of electricity being generated from low carbon sources today, electricity is still only 20% of energy and over a third of it is still generated by coal, with gas in second place at over 20%. Coal use is still rising by 4% per annum and new records are being set. While the UK has almost eliminated coal use from over 50% of electricity in the 1980s, and Europe and the United States are reducing their use by 20% per annum, this is being offset by China and India, which are growing their coal use by 5% and 8% per annum respectively. China uses around 55% coal and 9% natural gas. Just as the United States changed this relationship to achieve massive decarbonisation, China is looking to do so at the same time as it builds out renewables. China has an unrivalled grip on the global market for the latter, by design and through decades of forward planning, and it depends on its ‘no limits’ friendship with Russia for the former. While electric vehicles have extraordinary growth rates, there is as yet negligible displacement of oil use, particularly in air or shipping. A largely energy independent United States means that it needs the Middle East’s oil less than Europe, while China leans heavily on Iran. Energy often shapes foreign and economic policy as much as climate and environment policy.
Taken together, oil, gas and coal still represent over 80% of the global energy system and 80% of the human made contribution to the excess greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming. Switching from coal to gas and adding renewable energy can help to decarbonise the energy sector. But it’s not enough, measured either by speed or scale. Fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal need to be displaced by cleaner and renewable energy sources. So far, after some $6 trillion invested in renewables and $3 trillion in the electric grid over the last two decades, there has been little actual displacement of fossil fuels or reduction in emissions, more addition to the energy supply. Even greening electricity from 40% to 100% supply from low carbon sources will take trillions of dollars and decades and enormous volumes of metals, minerals and resources that need to be extracted with care for environmental and social impact and, if possible, avoiding unintended consequences. And that is before renewables’ share of energy supply displaces the other 80% of the energy system that is not yet and might not be electrified – think industrial heat and air and sea transport.
This is why the 198 Parties to the UNFCCC, the International Energy Agency, the EU, the US Department of Energy, and the Chinese government, to name a few, have all now placed energy efficiency at the top of their agenda. Energy efficiency – doing the same or more with less energy - is the crucial companion to lower carbon energy additions. It is the most abundant and cheapest source of carbon emission reductions, energy security and economic productivity gains, because it solves the fatal flaw in the modern energy system, which the focus of energy policy and investment of the past two decades has not – that most of the energy, which is so valuable, so essential and that plays such a significant role in geopolitics, security and even conflict - is wasted.
My previous Substacks and my book, ‘The Edge’ describe the extraordinary and colossal scale of energy losses that occur thanks to the centralised energy system, due to extraction and conversion losses (c. 10%), generation losses mostly as waste heat (c. 50%), and transmission and distribution losses (c. 10%). The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States and the UK’s Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) both regularly publish on energy flow and the extent of the losses. But as I have found out in practice through over 15 years of project development and investment, yet more energy can be lost at the point of use. Both mySubstacks and ‘The Edge’ describe what we can do about it.
In 2024, these are problems that can be addressed by bringing energy generation closer to the point of use (or even locating industry closer to the energy), for instance through waste gas and heat recovery and re-use, on-site energy generation using heat from conventional sources and deploying lower carbon technologies to harness solar, ground and air sourced heat, wind, solar, hydro and other renewable sources, through electrical and thermal storage, and through better electrical and mechanical equipment inside buildings and industrial facilities, like motors, controls, lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, insulation and building management systems.
Despite the travails, so far unsuccessful, of trying to convince London’s planning authorities to allow me to generate some energy on-site, I now have a low carbon, electric and energy efficient home, and one that has been transformed from its energy use in 1836 to reveal the possibilities that are available to us today. And even before any new technology is invented. But most energy is used outside the home, in industry, transport and commercial buildings. And while there is much for policymakers and investors to do in terms of implementation, the good news is that we have most of the answers at our fingertips. As I say in my book:
‘In so many ways we have known the problems and the solutions for a long time. The biggest innovation would be doing something about it’.
This is why I have greater expectations. And so should you.
Picture credit: ChatGPT 4.
Video credit: Hodder & Stoughton Limited, an Hachette UK company.
For more information on how commercially sustainable and financially attractive energy efficiency projects can be developed and invested in, please see www.sdclgroup.com and www.seeitplc.com.
For the full story, please read ‘The Edge: How competition for resources is pushing the world, and its climate, to the brink – and what we can do about it’, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing, an imprint of John Murray Press, part of the Hachette Book Group. Released in the UK in August, and on 5 December in the United States, ‘The Edge’ is available in bookshops or via Amazon here at:
https://www.amazon.com/Edge-competition-resources-pushing-climate/dp/1399810847
or here at: