For good reason, scholars are paying attention to energy systems recently. International climate change negotiations along with rapid advances in renewable energy technology and game-changing reductions in the cost of solar and wind energy have brought transformative changes and challenges to the fossil-fuel based energy regime that has reined supreme for the last century. It is a good time to reassess where we are, how we got here, and where we might be heading in the near future regarding the energy systems that undergird industrialism and modern life. These two monographs by Christopher Jones and Andrew Needham are among a growing body of historical studies that critically examine the evolution, structure, and consequences of our modern energy systems penned at a time when energy technologies and institutions are undergoing fundamental reinvention.
Jones sets the stage in Routes of Power by examining how the fossil fuel (“mineral”) energy regime established its hegemony in the 19th century. His key argument, reflected in the book’s title, is that “large energy transport systems”—canals for barging coal, oil pipelines, and high-voltage electric transmission lines—created the infrastructure for the fossil fuel regime, which cast the die, so to speak, for how our energy system would evolve (p. 2). Early innovations and investments gained momentum through economies of scale, political support, cutthroat competition, and what Jones calls reinforcing or synergistic “feedback loops” in which technologies for creating or using energy were designed to be compatible with the prevailing energy infrastructure.
Jones tells the story of how these routes of power for the mineral energy regime developed over time, providing rich and convincing material evidence for his arguments. He also provides a clear and compelling conceptual framework to organize and interpret this history. Each chapter reiterates a set of repeating themes starting with the relatively rapid advance of fossil fuel energy following development of effective transport infrastructures for moving coal or oil or electricity from sites of production to sites of consumption. This transition generated and was, in turn, accelerated by what Jones calls “landscapes of intensification” where industrial organization and mass production created economies of scale, which the above-mentioned feedback loops further reinforced. These landscapes of intensified energy production, however, also created extensive and largely unregulated environmental impacts and labor exploitation leading to a parallel landscape of inequitably distributed costs, harms, and benefits. Jones identifies both winners and losers in the shift to a mineral energy regime.
A final recurring theme of Jones’s study is that supply drives demand just as often as the reverse. Repeatedly, he describes how economies of scale led to a surfeit of supply, which drove the suppliers of coal and oil and electricity to invent marketing campaigns to encourage greater consumption. Profligate and wasteful energy use resulted. As he notes in the introduction, the creation of the fossil fuel world was “neither natural nor inevitable” (p. 2), but instead a result of conscious decisions, policies, and choices that have left us today with a set of troubling legacies as we seek to create a cleaner, more renewable, non-carbon based energy system with a more equitable distribution of costs and benefits.
Routes of Power is an admirably well-organized and well-written monograph, deftly balancing empirical data with story-driven interpretation. The book is a pleasure to read from start to finish. For those considering assigning the book for a course, it offers several virtues. Each chapter helpfully starts with a succinct introduction of the material, the organization is clear and consistent throughout the monograph, and the concluding chapter offers a collection of concise takeaway messages about energy and society. I would offer only a small quibble about some of the concluding points. Jones suggests that understanding the 19th century transition from organic to mineral energy regimes gives us clues to managing more effectively the current transition from carbon based to noncarbon based energy. There are, of course, relevant lessons here about the inertial force of large infrastructure investments, the dynamics of technological momentum, and the critical role of government policy in facilitating or inhibiting innovation. But some of Jones’s specific suggestions for how to move away from the fossil fuel energy regime suffer from their own version of technological inertia. Adhering to the main thesis of his book, he states that energy transport infrastructure will be key to the renewable energy transition, offering as an example the need to construct long-distance high-voltage power lines from windy & sunny regions to centers of electric demand (e.g., wind farms in Wyoming connected to the giant California market). Certainly this is one path utilities and government policy makers are taking. However, this assumes the continuation of a centralized electric grid with power running from remote nodes of production to urban and industrial nodes of consumption which is simply a reiteration of the old utility model. Jones does not mention the technological, economic, and political forces now facilitating decentralization of power production or how cost-competitive solar photovoltaic panels and affordable battery storage are destabilizing the traditional producer-to-consumer utility model. I would have liked to see him speculate about new kinds of “routes of power” that will shape our energy future.
While Jones’s study focuses on the mid-Atlantic region of the United States in the period from 1820 to 1930, Needham’s study, in contrast, focuses on the American Southwest (specifically Arizona) in the post-World War Two era, emphasizing the 1950s-1970s. Like Jones, Needham focuses on the consequences of choosing a centralized coal-based energy regime, the hegemonic power of regionally integrated, private sector dominated, policy supported networks of energy supply and demand, and the asymmetrical distribution of costs and benefits. But Needham’s story is more oriented toward a social justice critique of the inequitable relations between core and periphery, between metropolitan Phoenix as the rich and powerful demand center and the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners as the exploited hinterland where coal strip mines and polluting coal-fired power plants generate electricity for urban consumers but not a comparable benefit for Navajos. Summarizing his central lesson, Needham states, “Metropolitan development and Indian underdevelopment…went hand in hand in postwar America” (p. 8).
Similar to Jones’s study, which is organized into three parts (coal, oil, electricity), Needham’s study has multiple parts, although the connecting tissues are not always as apparent as in Jones’s work. The first story (chapters 2 & 3) is about the postwar population boom in metropolitan Phoenix. It’s a familiar tale about Sunbelt suburbanization in a milieu of “growth liberalism,” but Needham handles it well and uses a wide array of primary sources to make his points. Because his larger aim in the monograph is to expose race-based inequalities, Needham’s narrative of Phoenix’s boom emphasizes the segregated geography of urban poverty and privilege. These two chapters also introduce the two key players in Arizona’s electric utility business: the investor owned Arizona Public Service (APS) and the publicly owned Salt River Project (SRP). Both were transformed by the postwar boom and aggressively sought new sources of power for their customers, which drew them to the large coal reserves on the Navajo reservation.
Leaving behind the gaze from Phoenix, in chapter 4 Needham takes his readers north to the Navajo Nation where he describes the rise of the coal industry in the Four Corners, pushed by a formidable coalition of utility companies, government agencies, and Navajo tribal leaders interested in “modernization.” Rather than portraying the tribe as a victim or casualty, Needham shows how the Navajo Nation sought to leverage their mineral resources for broad-based economic and social development on the reservation. Unfortunately, for a complicated array of reasons, the resulting coal strip mines and massive power plants ended up benefiting Phoenix boosters far more than the Navajo Nation, according to Needham. Not surprisingly, profit prevailed over poverty alleviation and the Navajo reservation became Phoenix’s plundered province.
After a two-chapter interlude that looks at regional electric grid integration, hydropower development on the Colorado River, and the rise of environmental protest, Needham returns to this view from the Navajo reservation in chapter 7 to examine controversy within the tribe over coal development. Indigenous environmental protest in the late 1960s and 1970s merged with anti-colonialist sentiment resulting in a powerful movement for Navajo Nationalism on the reservation. Needham sees this as a positive development in correcting inequality and exploitation, although problems of poverty and underdevelopment persist, mainly, he argues, due to the legacies of earlier decisions. Here, Needham and Jones complement each other as Jones’s thesis about the critical long-term significance of infrastructure choices spotlights the continuing troubles on the reservation. Once the decision was made to mine Navajo coal and burn it in giant local power plants, a whole host of synergistic feedback loops has served to sustain the momentum of those decisions: long-term coal leases, sunk investments, outside ownership, lease income to the tribal government, tribal employment in the coal industry, etc. The coal inertia buries alternatives; extrication seems unlikely. Perhaps fittingly, Needham concludes his study with a short lament titled “Good Bye, Big Sky.” I wonder, though, if the continued advance of Navajo nationalism and environmentalism, along with dramatic improvements in the economics of renewable energy might warrant a more optimistic conclusion. The Navajo Nation’s solar and wind resources are as prodigious as its buried coal.
On the whole, both books are well-written and refreshingly free of polemical posturing despite the fact that both offer a critical perspective on social inequality, business and political corruption, and environmental pollution and degradation. Both books are well-informed by geography theory and political economy, but neither allows theoretical discourse to mar the narrative—with the possible exception of Needham’s last chapter, which slogs through some dissertation-style discourse analysis. Both balance their critical perspectives with hopeful acknowledgements of progress and problem-solving. Both books would work well as texts for upper division undergraduate or graduate classes in environmental history, energy history, and economic history. This is a field of study that will likely remain fertile and highly relevant for years to come as modern societies around the world make the transition away from fossil fuel-based energy regimes over the next couple of decades.
