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This chapter investigates the strategic investments by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE toward non-hydrocarbon-based energy sources. This move marks a critical juncture in the region’s energy policy landscape. Driven by a multifaceted agenda – reducing reliance on hydrocarbons, mitigating carbon emissions, and fostering a more diversified and industrially productive economy – the Gulf states are actively pursuing renewable and nuclear energy solutions. Their path, however, is fraught with obstacles, and this chapter critically examines the institutional barriers with the potential to significantly impede their progress.
This chapter examines the literary registration of the life- and environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers. It focuses on fictional representations of the contemporary soy frontier in Argentina and the former coal-mining districts of North East England. Specifically, the chapter considers Samanta Schweblin’s Distancia de rescate (Fever Dream, 2014), described by the author as Argentina’s first glyphosate novel, alongside Benjamin Myer’s Pig Iron (2012), which registers the socioecological fallout from the collapse of the coal frontier in County Durham. Placing both novels in the context of earlier depictions of the agricultural and industrial frontiers of Argentina and North East England, I show how, despite the very different geopolitical situations to which they respond, Schweblin’s and Myer’s narratives share certain thematic, stylistic, and formal likenesses in their mediation of the volatile and violent dynamics of commodity frontiers.
Eighteenth-century Britain experienced massive growth in its transportation networks. As turnpikes, canals, and railways extended throughout the realm, they inevitably crossed one another. Each crossing compelled Britons to decide how different forms of traffic would share space. This chapter shows how writings occasioned by crossing disputes conceived infrastructure not as an unthought material strata – as it is often construed today – but as a call to weigh and prioritize different amenities. The chapter focuses specifically on one contested crossing in early eighteenth-century South Wales where a coal tram crossed the king’s highway. This intersection spurred an exchange of pamphlets between those who characterized the tram tracks as a public nuisance, and those who regarded them as a public work that employed artisans, distributed carbon fuel, and generated customs revenue. At stake in these writings is the question of whether privately owned freight conduits advanced or undercut the public good.
This chapter takes a comparative approach to fossil fuel narratives to consider whether there are continuities between coal fiction and oil fiction in different periods of modernity and whether there are identifiable formal features that unify fossil fuel fiction. The chapter pursues these questions by examining correspondences between Helon Habila’s 2010 novel Oil on Water, which depicts the socio-environmental consequences of oil extraction in the Niger Delta, and several exemplary fictions of extraction written 100 or 150 years earlier, including Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), Joseph Conrad’s ‘Youth’ (1898) and Heart of Darkness (1899), and D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913). The commonalities that persist across the historical gap from coal fiction to oil fiction express distinguishing aspects of life under fossil fuels and constitutive elements of the writing of fossil fuels.
China's energy strategies have attracted a huge amount of attention, precisely because they have been so effective. Chinese energy companies - from global oil and gas giants, to new wind and solar power success stories as well as electric grid operators, not to mention rising Electric Vehicle (EV) producers - have all had an impact on the industry, and sometimes shaken it up. In solar Photovoltaic (PV) cells there are aggressive counter-moves being made by both the US (and potentially the EU) against Chinese subsidized exports. These threaten to spill over into related sectors, and could trigger an all-out trade war.
Due to the provisions of the Svalbard Treaty, Russia has kept a presence on this Norwegian archipelago – primarily based on coal mining – and has regularly made it clear that ensuring the continuation of this presence is a political goal. Since the late 2000s, Russia has attempted to revitalise its presence, stressing the need for economic efficiency and diversification away from coal. This includes tourism, fish processing and research activities. In recent years, Russia’s official rhetoric on Svalbard has sharpened, i.a. accusing Norway of breaching the treaty’s provisions on military use of the islands. The article contrasts the statements with the concrete actions undertaken by Russia to preserve and develop its presence. Russia’s policy of presence on Svalbard is not particularly well-coordinated or strategic – beyond an increasing openness to exploring new ways to sustain a sufficient presence. Financial limitations have constrained initiatives. The search for new activities and solutions is driven primarily by the need for cost-cutting and consolidating a limited presence deemed necessary for Russian security interest, not as strategies aimed at increasing Russian influence over the archipelago.
The Japanese government's refusal to recognize the presence of Korean and Chinese forced laborers during World War II at Nagasaki's Hashima Island coal mine, popularly known as Gunkanjima (“Battleship Island”) continues since the abandoned mine was World Heritage inscribed in 2015. Hashima is one of a number of locations approved under the title “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution.” Hashima has become a major tourist draw, but lacks any meaningful historical information at or near the site, while excluding any mention of Korean and Chinese forced laborers. The site also is in serious decay and appears to lack any conservation plan in line with World Heritage “Operational Guidelines.” The South Korean and Japanese governments agreed to acknowledge the presence of Koreans who “were forced to work” at the mine, but the Japanese government has subsequently refused to implement the agreement. Use of Hashima as an “urban ruins tourist attraction” instead raises questions as to whether the Japanese government has complied with requirements for World Heritage listing. This policy of neglect continues the Abe government's refusal to acknowledge full responsibility for Japan's injustice toward Korean forced laborers during World War II.
London’s seasonal foreign trade reflected its access to northern and continental Europe and the City’s association with the East and West Indies, but coal and other coastal trades dominated daily port activity. London was a tidal river port centred below London Bridge, with waterfront industry spread more widely. Organisationally, it was complex, with many different interests. As foreign trade increased, legal restrictions on landing places for foreign produce were blamed by merchants for congestion. A campaign by mercantile interests for the introduction of docks followed. The author examines the motives here. For leading West India merchants, specialised dock facilities would enable them to control and discipline a directly employed labour force, reducing theft. The eventual outcome, the construction of docks by joint-stock companies, owed much to State support. Its involvement went beyond the introduction of docks. For the government, this was an element of a warehousing scheme designed to develop London as an entrepôt. General port efficiency would be promoted by appointing the Corporation of London as harbour authority.
Despite solar and wind power generating the cheapest electricity in history, around forty countries are still building new coal-burning power plants – the worst thing anyone can do for climate change. How two years of campaigning led to twenty countries committing to phase-out coal power, and what needs to happen next.
Change in the economy, just as in the climate, can be self-reinforcing, sudden, and irreversible. The world’s fastest transitions to renewable energy and electric vehicles are happening in countries where economic tipping points have been crossed in these sectors. By deliberately targeting these thresholds, we can achieve large-scale change much more quickly than we might expect. To find these opportunities, we need to move away from traditional cost–benefit analysis and adopt a very different approach to decision-making.
In this article, we explore the impact of colliery closure programs across the nationalized British coal industry. We chart the regional disparities in these and the mobilization of community opposition to national protests, leading to the national miners’ strikes of 1972, 1974, and 1984–5. This article demonstrates how closures have changed the industrial politics of mining unions for miners, junior officials, and managers and have increasingly alienated NCB officials and mining communities. We demonstrate how this undermined the ideals of nationalization. This is examined through moral economic frameworks and within the context of changes to the UK’s energy mix, with implications for contemporary deliberations on public ownership, energy transitions, and regional development.
Regular vertical variations in mineralogy and chemistry indicate that underclay beneath the Herrin (No. 6) coal in southwestern Illinois has undergone in situ alteration. Alteration resulted from the downward movement of hydrogen ions, as indicated by the progressive leaching of acid-sensitive minerals adjacent to the coal. Mineralogical trends observed in the underclay with increasing depth below the coal include: (1) a decrease in the expandability of mixed-layer illite/smectite (I/S); (2) an increase in the amount of ordered I/S with respect to randomly interstratified I/S; (3) an increase in the amount of discrete illite with respect to expandable clays; and (4) an increase in chlorite and calcite. Ordered I/S is the dominant mixed-layer clay where calcite is present, but randomly interstratified I/S dominates where calcite is absent. The pH of the underclay also increases with depth. These trends are consistent with an origin by acid leaching of a preexisting mineral assemblage that included illite, chlorite, and calcite. Other acid-alteration trends may be expected for different precursor minerals and for different leaching intensities and durations.
Spherical halloysite aggregates have been identified for the first time in mineral matter isolated from bituminous coals. The spherules, found in Permian coals of the Sydney basin, New South Wales, range from 0.4 to 0.6 µm in diameter and have a delicate ring-like structure that helps to confirm the halloysite identification. They appear from their location to be related to influxes of pyroclastic debris, either directly or from nearby soils, into the original peat accumulation. Analytical electron microscopy indicates higher proportions of Si and Fe than coexisting particles of hexagonal platy kaolinite, and electron diffraction reveals a typical disordered halloysite structure. The aggregates are larger than those normally reported in soils, and comparison to growth rates in soils suggests development over a significantly longer time than that expected for accumulation of the host coal seams. The buckled structure in the ring-like pattern and the related crude polyhedral outlines probably reflect shrinkage with dehydration during the coalification process, but it may also be due to the different sample preparation techniques.
Berthierine (formerly chamosite) occurs as concretions, lenses, and bands in carbonaceous, kaolinitic shale of freshwater coal-swamp deposits in Paleogene and Upper Triassic coal measures of Japan. Textural relations in thin sections of the Triassic berthierine rocks and a siderite-kaolinite-berthierine-quartz assemblage in Paleogene rocks indicate that the berthierine formed by reaction of siderite with kaolinite. The transformation of siderite and kaolinite to berthierine and quartz occurs progressively under reducing conditions between 65° and 150°C and at burial depths of 2–5 km. Utatsu berthierine is an aluminous, low-Mg variety as compared with berthierine pellets in modern marine and estuarine sediments and in ancient marine ironstones. Fe is the dominant octahedral cation with Fe2+ ≫ Fe3+. The composition of the berthierine varies between different morphological types. Utatsu berthierine transformed to ferrous chamosite when kaolinite in the host shale changed to pyrophyllite. These transformations are estimated to have occurred at ∼160°C and at a burial depth of ∼3 km.
In the struggle to sustain the nation’s economy and society accompanying World War One, the concept of ‘applied science’ was widely deployed and further enriched. It gained new traction through wartime and post-war administrative developments and the debates over research amongst the military services, civilian agencies, and private industry. Generic issues of the time were highlighted by the 1917 Sothern Holland enquiry into the organisation of naval research. Subsequently, new establishments, such as the DSIR and the Committee of Civil Research, shaped applied science. The chapter shows the interpretation of applied science by individual institutions and the press by exploring the details of specific research projects in the military, the radio industry and, above all, coal-oil manufacture. Thus it treats research on converting coal to oil at ICI, the Low Temperature Carbonisation Company, and Powell Duffryn. Through their thinking over funding priorities, new bodies often formulated and promoted their own conceptions of applied science. They both responded to public opinion and helped shape widely shared understanding.
After uncovering oil’s role in decolonization, one question immediately emerges: what about other natural resources? Although oil is neither the only fossil fuel on which we depend nor the only resource that produces a substantial amount of wealth, it appears to be the only natural resource that can lead to separate independence. This chapter compares oil and other natural resources to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between natural resources and territorial sovereignty. Through an investigation of coal, precious metals, and natural gas, it argues that natural resources can lead colonial areas to divergent outcomes – namely amalgamation, separate independence, and secessionism – after decolonization depending on (1) their commercial value and (2) the timing of their discovery. While resources with low economic value did not affect the territoriality of states, those with high value resulted in three different outcomes. Resources discovered before or during the process of colonization often resulted in amalgamation into a larger entity. Those discovered between colonization and decolonization often resulted in separate independence. Finally, those discovered after decolonization often led to secessionism.
Called “the rock that burns” by Aristotle, coal was the first major industrial fuel, created about 300 million years ago as heat and pressure compressed pools of decaying plant matter. Burned to generate heat to boil water and make steam to move a piston in a Watt “fire engine” or a giant turbine in a modern power station, the industrialization of manufacturing, transportation, and electric power is examined from beginnings in the United Kingdom to today’s increased use of coal combustion in developing countries despite the limited thermal efficiency and harmful combustion by-products.
A transition simplifies or improves the efficiency of old ways, turning intellect into industry with increased capital – when both transpire, change becomes unstoppable. The transition to a more efficient combustion fuel changed the global economy when coal replaced wood (twice as efficient) and oil replaced coal (roughly twice as efficient again). The history of the Industrial Revolution is explained through the energy content of different fuels (wood, peat, coal) from the 1800s, early steam engines that produced power for manufacturing and propulsion, and the political, economic, and social consequences of industrialization (wealth, health, and globalization), culminating in Thomas Edison’s 1882, coal-fired, electricity-generating, power station in Lower Manhattan.
There is much to do to create a modern energy paradigm, one that is clean, sustainable, and economically viable, but the changes are coming as overall efficiencies improve and manufacturing costs decrease for today’s renewable technologies. In 2000, 0.6% of total global energy production was generated either by wind or solar, a 50% increase in a decade; by 2010, the amount had doubled.1 By 2013, Spain had achieved a global first as wind-generated power became its main source of energy (21% of total demand, enough to run 7 million homes2), while both Portugal and Denmark now regularly produce days powered 100% by wind.
Historically cloudy England scored a first, as solar became the largest source of grid energy during an especially sunny 2018 spring bank-holiday weekend,3 while in the midst of high winds from Storm Bella on Boxing Day in 2020, the UK was more than half powered by wind, a new record.
The 1860s marked a key moment in the history of extraction and the rise of extraction-based life, a social order premised on the removal of subsurface resources and, especially, on the coal economy. This decade saw the explosion of an economic discourse around coal exhaustion in Britain, thanks to the publication of William Stanley Jevons’s The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines[GK21] (1865), and the expansion of overseas imperial extraction projects following, for example, the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1869) in South Africa. In this chapter, I explore the role of extraction in the 1860s’ most characteristic genre: sensation fiction. After an overview of the chronotope of exhaustion and how it manifests in fiction, I turn to two sensation novels premised on extractive plots: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret [GK22](1862) and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone [GK23](1868). Together they suggest the extent to which British national life was, by the 1860s, already imagined to be fully dependent on extraterritorial mineral inputs.