Energy Consumption in Portugal 1856-2006, 2009

hjh hjhbnmb Series onkjhjh Energy consumption 1. Paolo Malanima, Energy consumption in Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries, 2006. 2. Paul Warde, Energy consumption in England & Wales 1560-2000, 2007. 3. Sofia Teives Henriques, Energy consumption in Portugal 1856-2006, 2009. In copertina: Argand's lamp; developed in 1870 by the Swiss chemist named Amie Argand. Energy Consumption in Portugal 1856-2006 Sofia Teives Henriques Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto di Studi sulle Società del Mediterraneo Elaborazione ed impaginazione a cura di Aniello Barone e Paolo Pironti ISBN 978-88-8080-109-2 Copyright © 2009 by Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Istituto di Studi sulle Società del Mediterraneo (ISSM). Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Nessuna parte di questa pubblicazione può essere fotocopiata, riprodotta, archiviata, memorizzata o trasmessa in qualsiasi forma o mezzo – elettronico, meccanico, reprografico, digitale – se non nei termini previsti dalla legge che tutela il Diritto d’Autore. INDEX Foreword 1. The energy sources 1.1. The energy transition 11 1.2. Definitions 14 1.3. Primary sources 15 1.4. Territory, population and GDP 16 2. Traditional sources 2.1. Earlier studies 21 2.2. Food 24 2.3. Firewood 32 2.3.1. Household firewood consumption 37 2.3.2. Industrial firewood consumption 48 2.3.3. Transportation 53 2.3.4. Firewood as a fuel for electricity and gas production and cogeneration 53 2.4. Animals 55 2.5. Wind & Water, solar and geothermal heat 59 3. Modern sources 3.1 Coal 71 3.2. Oil 80 3.3. Natural Gas 86 3.4. Primary electricity 87 3.5. Others 92 4. Structure, trend and level 4.1. Structure 95 4.2. Trend and level 99 4.3. Energy intensity in the long-run 103 List of abbreviations 111 6 Sofia Tevies Henriques References 113 Appendix 125 I Aggregate series 1. Energy consumption in Portugal 1856-2006 129 2. The structure of energy consumption 1856-2006 132 3. Population, total and per capita energy consumption, GDP and Energy intensity 1856-2006 135 II The energy carriers 1. Food for men 141 2. Animals 144 3. Firewood 147 4. Wind and water; solar and geothermal heat 150 5. Coal 153 6.1 Energetic oil 156 6.2 Oil: non-energy uses 159 7. Primary electricity 162 8. Others 166 FOREWORD This book is the third in a collection of works whose purpose is to quantify long-run energy consumption in a range of European countries, using similar methods. The primary aim of this book is to set out the data and the methods for energy consumption in Portugal for the years 1856-2006. To facilitate comparison between different countries each book is presented in a similar fashion. After some introduc- tory remarks on the purpose of this study and on definitions (Ch. 1) we explain statistical methods and sources employed in the construction of traditional energy carrier series (Ch. 2) and modern energy carrier series (Ch. 3). Structure, trend and energy intensity are analysed in Chapter 4. 1. The energy sources 1. The energy sources 1.1. The energy transition The availability of fossil energy has been considered as one of the most important foundations of modern economic growth. Societies around the world have gone through a generalized process of energy transition from vegetable and animate sources to mineral forms of energy. This passage meant that societies are no longer dependent on the renewable but limited supply of land to grow food, fodder and firewood for their energy needs but that can augment their energy basis through the use of non-renewable but vast and dense subterranean forms of energy amassed over millions of years in the form of coal and oil1. The use of fossil energy sources has shaped our society and allowed for great in- creases in income per capita, industrialization, urbanization and globalization. However, the magnitude and speed of the process have varied in different regions of the world. While the developed countries are today almost totally dependent on fossil fuels, most of the underdeveloped regions in the world still rely mainly on traditional energy carriers such as biomass and muscular energy. The transition to fossil energy was also very different for European countries. For the Brit- ish and Dutch economies, this process can be traced back to the 16th or 17th century, while for others it occurred only in the 19th or 20th century. Until very recently, however, no at- tempts were made to quantify traditional energy carriers; most of the research has concentrated only on modern sources. Without a quantification of traditional energy sources it remains difficult to understand the nature of the transition itself. Was the transition process a revolutionary 1 On this subject see Cipolla (1978); Wrigley (1988) and Sieferle (2001). 12 Sofia Tevies Henriques break, with fossil fuels quickly replacing the old ones? Or was the energy transition a slower and smooth process, with traditional sources coexisting with modern ones? Energy quantification cannot explain per se the reasons behind adoption or rejection of different energy carriers by different strata of society, but it is an important step to identify the main uses, the speed and the magnitude of the transition and the relation between energy use and economic growth. The purpose of this research is to quantify all energy carriers of the Portuguese energy transition from 1856 to the present day. In 1856 Portugal was, along with the majority of the European countries, an essentially organic society. The steam machine, steam ship, railways and the brilliant gaslight were already introduced in the country, but the traditional energy carriers still accounted for 95 per cent of total energy consumption. It was still the windmill that ground the majority of the cereals of the nation, the fire- place that heated the houses and cooked the meals, the ox and cow that performed the work in the fields. In the be- ginning of the 21th century a very different situation emer- ges, and 90 per cent of energy consumption is from modern energy carriers; 86 per cent from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels and electricity replaced firewood and muscular energy in every dimension of daily life. New energy carriers enabled the Industrial Revolution and an economic and social growth never imagined. However, fossil fuels also bring pol- lution and environmental damage. While societies in the past were concerned with the capacity to grow according to the limited availability of vegetable energy, the world today is increasingly aware of its limits to growth due to a non- renewable and environmental damaging energy basis. This new context of environmental degradation, global warming and the prospect of high oil prices has given rise to other questions. Industrialized countries are now attempting to begin another energy transition, from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Hydrogen, biofuels, wind, wave and solar elec- The energy sources 13 tricity seem to be the energy of the future. Technology is developing, but most of the denominated new energy sources were considered traditional ones earlier. Can economic growth still be maintained with the transition to renewable sources? Smil gives five reasons for the transition to be more difficult than expected: the scale of the shift; the lower energy density of renewable fuels; the lower power density of energy production; the intermittency of supply due to climatic variation dependence; the uneven geo- graphical distribution of renewable sources and the diffi- culty to making it available to all regions in the world2. All those constraints to growth were present in pre-fossil fuel societies. From an historical point of view, this shift is to be followed with attention, since fossil fuel use seems to have been a necessary but not a sufficient condition for modern economic growth3. Thus, the quantification and the study of the role of traditional sources of energy in the economic growth of past societies provide economic historians with tools to participate in the environmental debate. This work is part of a larger comparative study of the is- sues outlined above across several European countries. It owes a great debt to the inspiration and data provided by my colleagues. I would like to thank participants in the EGP workshops: Silvana Bartoletto, Ben Gales, Astrid Kander, Kerstin Enflo, Magnus Lindmark, Paolo Malanima, Maria Mar del Rubio, Lennart Schön, Paul Warde and Tony Wrigley for methodological discussions and exchange of information. To Paul Sharp and Mar Rubio my thanks for quickly giving me access to UK trade statistics. Part of the disaggregated data presented in the appendixes is un- published material collected while working on the project “Electricity and the question of energy in Portugal” FCT/ISCTE 2002-2004 coordinated by Nuno Madureira. The continuation of this work after 2006 was eased by the 2 Smil (2006). 3 Malanima (2006b). 14 Sofia Tevies Henriques existence of the INE digital library, which provides online all the institute publications since 18644. Above all, I would like to thank Astrid Kander, my supervisor, for guidance and earlier comments on previous versions of this work and for her remarkable thesis which inspired the work in the EGP group and this series of booklets. Paolo Malanima has encouraged the writing of this booklet. His first volume and Paul Warde’s second volume in this series of books have provided a model on which this work is at times very closely based. 1.2. Definitions The objective of this investigation is to provide an ac- count of every form of energy exploited directly by human beings in the past and in the present. The intention is to quantify on an annual basis the following list of primary energy carriers.

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