The switch from water to coal-powered factories that set off the industrial revolution in 19th century Britain may not have been a result of a lack of suitable locations to build more water wheels as previously thought. Instead, droughts may have made water power less reliable and coal more attractive.
Historians battle over the precise timing of the transition in Britain from an agrarian economy powered by muscle, wood and water to a manufacturing economy powered by coal. They also disagree about the causes of this industrial revolution, which is among the most consequential developments in history.
One cause proposed by historians is that industrialists ran out of attractive sites along rivers to build the water wheels that powered many of their factories in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. “That implied water was scarce and expensive, and steam and coal was abundant and cheap,” says at Lund University in Sweden.
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Past analyses of the water power available to early industrialists relied on 20th-century precipitation patterns, but these are unreliable for estimating historical water power, says at the University of Glasgow in the UK. “The farther back in the past the fuzzier it gets,” she says.
Jonell, a geomorphologist who studies processes that shape the Earth’s surface, and her colleagues, used precipitation records collected by what is now the UK Meteorological Office starting in 1862 combined with elevation data to create a more accurate model of the water flowing in Britain’s rivers and streams at the time. They corrected the model for modern dams, aqueducts and other obstructions.
The researchers found that industrialists in England, Scotland and Wales had barely tapped the isle’s potential water power when they made the transition to coal. Concentrated development had saturated a few places, such as the river Spodden near Manchester, but overall “there was still plenty of water power that existed”, says Jonell, who this work at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado, on 11 October.
The finding supports the argument that coal power was neither cheaper nor more abundant or more productive than water power at the time, says at Uppsala University in Sweden, who wasn’t involved with the work. “It adds another nail to the coffin of the old orthodoxy,” he says.
An alternative possibility to a scarcity of water power is that a series of droughts or seasonal irregularities may have made water power less reliable than coal, says Jonell. Historical documents discuss drought in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, though Jonell says it isn’t clear from limited precipitation records whether actual droughts took place at the time, or how they might have interacted with other factors.
Malm, who wasn’t involved with this work, has previously argued that drought played a role in this transition. He says workers’ movements in the 1830s and 40s may have prevented industrialists from relying on labour to make up production shortfalls that could have been driven by changing precipitation patterns. “Drought became a problem because of the limitation in working hours,” he says.
The mobility of coal was also a factor, says Malm. Relying on coal meant factories could be built near cheap labour or efficient transportation, instead of being limited to attractive sites along rivers.
“Energy transitions aren’t primarily about price or supply in the narrow sense, but about other factors,” says Malm. He adds that this lesson is relevant for understanding today’s transition away from fossil fuels.
at New York University says lower rainfall may have been a factor in the transition to coal, but he suspects improvements in steam engines that made steam power cheaper were more important.
