The Fuel Revolution

Human demand for fuels increased gradually through the centuries. This is partly due to the increasing numbers of people in the world. They use wood and other fuels for cooking, heating and light.

It was also due to the development of early industries such as making pottery, clothes, and iron and other metals. But in the 1700s the Industrial Revolution began. At first, the energy supply was water flowing swiftly downhill.

From the 1780s, the countryside sprouted factories with smoking chimneys. They contained steam engines, which powered all kinds of new machinery. By about 1895, coal has overtaken wood as the main fuel. Mining coal was a huge business and it was dirty, hard and dangerous. Yet it seemed like the energy from burned coal was almost 'free fuel'. Dig it out and put it on a fire. It gave out a lot of concentrated heat to power all manner of factories and industries.

Of course, now we know that coal will not last forever. At least one-third of the world's easily mined coal has been used. As the 1800s drew to a close, a new kind of fuel began to power the still-expanding Industrial Revolution - the new fuel was oil.

In 1879, the American inventor Thomas Edison came up with the electric light bulb. He opened the first electricity generating plant, its steam boilers fuelled by a combination of wood and coal.

After that, more and more power stations fired by coal, gas and oil were generating more electricity for more factories and buildings. Today, worldwide demand for electricity - one of our greatest fuel-users - is estimated to rise by 250 % by 2025.