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Historisk tidskrift 130:4 • 2010

Innehåll (Contents) 2010:4

Uppsatser (Articles)

Energi och temporalitet

Av Lars Berggren & Per Eliasson

 

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Summary

Energy and temporality

In this article studies changes in the long-term energy supply of the city of Malmö are studied. The absence of waterways prevented the transportation of fuel and other goods to Malmö. As a result the city was confined to rely on a narrow hinterland dominated by grain production. Peat was used as a substitute for wood as a fuel. The first important energy transition was the change from wood to fossil fuels, which started a trend towards increased use of steam engine technology. This led to improvements in land and sea transports, which extended the hinterland. Instead of importing firewood and timber from the West Coast Malmö started to export wood. The introduction of electricity provided conditions for a new transport system and increased industrial production. The construction of the first oil terminal in 18 9 8 was a starting-point for new methods to distribute kerosene and subsequently gasoline, which were preconditions for automobiles that had a potential of changing relations with the city’s hinterland.

William Sewell, Jr’s theory on how the dynamics of capital accumulation produces temporal patterns that are “contradictory, conflictual, cyclical and chronologically crisis-prone” is used to analyze the development of Malmö’s energy supply. Starting in the city’s natural environment and applying a long time horizon it is possible to identify a clear trend. Comparison with the older system of wood energy makes clear what early nineteenth-century changes in the availability of energy really meant. Crucial events like railway construction, the establishment of a hydroelectric plant, the new sewage pumping station and the construction of the oil port could initiate new routines but could also reinforce existing practices, like the interconnection of two steam engine technologies in transportation.

Keywords

energy transition, energy history, coal, petroleum, periodisation