Hydro Energy, Power Transitions, and the Onset of Canada’s Nice Acceleration – Lively Historical past

Daniel Macfarlane

That is the second publish in a collection exploring the potential of the Nice Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance of Canadian environmental historical past. The posts on this collection are cross-posted with Lively Historical past.

If the Nice Acceleration – the dramatic enhance in human exercise and the ensuing affect on the Earth’s pure programs because the mid-Twentieth century – is a sound framework, then absolutely Canada helped set the tempo.¹ In any case, Canada emerged as a significant producer of fossil fuels through the Chilly Struggle and has earned the moniker of local weather villain with one of many highest per-capita emissions on this planet.

The beginning of the Nice Acceleration (GA) is mostly held to be in regards to the midpoint of the 20th century (for a lot of, the GA is intertwined, even synonymous, with the Anthropocene). That the 1947 Leduc oil strike, marking Canada’s ascent as a significant oil-producing nation, occurred presently appears to solidify the applicability of the Nice Acceleration body.

However Canada was an power superpower lengthy earlier than fossil fuels grew to become one of many nation’s main exports. And that was within the realm of hydroelectricity. Electrical energy has confirmed to be the foundational driver of modernity (and in addition of each the GA and the Anthropocene). As an instance, whereas fossil fuels are deeply embedded within the consumption patterns of most Canadians, I can think about my life freed from hydrocarbons way more simply than I can think about it devoid of electrical energy.

If certainly electrical energy is much more needed for contemporary existence than fossil fuels, would possibly the inception of Canada’s Nice Acceleration be tied to the nation’s progress of hydroelectricity? In that case, then the beginning of the GA, a minimum of within the Canadian context, might be positioned within the early a long time of the 20th century.

Power Transitions?

To make this case, I’d like to start by invoking Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s 2025 e book Extra and Extra and Extra: An All-Consuming Historical past of Power.² Fressoz takes situation with the “power transition” idea, largely attributing its origins to western twentieth century lecturers, scientists, and establishments – together with atomic energy advocates, fossil gasoline firms, and the Worldwide Panel on Local weather Change. Adopting a worldwide perspective, the creator contends that major power varieties within the fashionable interval have really been symbiotic and cumulative, however this has been obscured by the tendency to concentrate on relative over absolute use.

Thus, we communicate of the historic alternative of wooden and coal by oil and fuel, for instance. Besides that, as Fressoz stresses, coal and wooden use continued to go up after they have been supposedly changed, even when their share of the power combine shrank. The truth is, extra whole coal and wooden are being burned and used right this moment than ever earlier than in human historical past.

Consequently, flawed beliefs in regards to the timing and length of historic power transitions underpin current makes an attempt to decarbonize. That’s, environmental historians, political ecologists, and different lecturers have, based on the e book, reified this supposed previous sample of power transitions into the premise for our up to date method to a transition away from fossil fuels.

But Fressoz avers that this power transition principle displays the “ideology of capital within the twenty-first century”³ because it justifies our present too-slow method to local weather mitigation, fostering the assumption that we will anticipate unproven technological options slightly than making far-reaching political and financial transformations now. Following this line of considering, even when we do dramatically enhance our sources of renewable power, we’re prone to simply preserve utilizing much more fossil fuels on high of that.

Canada’s Nice Acceleration

 So, what does this all imply for Canada’s Nice Acceleration? The cumulative and symbiotic use of power kinds can actually be learn as supporting the GA. At the same time as Canada turn out to be a petro state and a nuclear state, it remained a hydro state; that’s, the rise of Canadian oil and reactors didn’t result in a decline in hydroelectricity nor coal.

Certainly, by a number of metrics the height of Canadian coal use occurred close to the tip of the 20th century (since then pure fuel utilization within the nation has elevated, usually instead of coal). And Canada has continued to construct bigger and bigger hydroelectric dams.

World hydropower put in capability progress since 1900. https://www.hydropower.org/weblog/blog-hydropower-growth-and-development-through-the-decades

If we take a look at the charts and graphs marshalled in help of the Nice Acceleration, some noticeable upswings started earlier than the Second World Struggle, particularly in North America. Economist Robert Gordon has argued that, a minimum of within the U.S. context, the post-1945 age was not the interval when the vast majority of the “acceleration” befell, however slightly the period when it reached its top-end velocity.⁴

For Gordon, it was really the primary 4 a long time of the 20th century that have been probably the most revolutionary interval of concentrated enlargement in human historical past, characterised by innovations that might “solely occur as soon as”. By 1940, most American houses have been “networked” and had electrical energy, heating, working water and sewers, telephones, and so forth.

Given Canadian proximity and connections to the U.S., one would possibly surmise that the American state of affairs additionally utilized to its northern neighbour. Aside from a handful of  bigger city areas, nonetheless, Canadians remained reliant on energy derived from the natural power regime for residential use till in regards to the center the 20th century.⁵ Although electrical energy in houses wasn’t as widespread in Canada as within the U.S. earlier than the onset of the Second World Struggle, that power kind was nonetheless extra widespread inside Canada than in virtually every other nation all over the world.

Electrical energy

Beginning within the Eighties, a few of the world’s first hydroelectric stations have been opened in Canada. For the reason that delivery of hydropower, Canada has been one of many globe’s preeminent builders of this power sort each in gross, relative, and technological phrases. It was among the many earliest to characteristic the central station mannequin, a number of of the world’s largest hydroelectric stations have been erected in Canada, and the primary ever crossborder energy line traversed the Niagara River.

Canada’s put in hydro capability went from 1,011,000 horsepower (hp) in 1910 to 1,754,100 hp in 1920 – at which level hydroelectricity was answerable for 97% of the nation’s electrical energy, in comparison with 20% within the U.S. – after which 5,114,100 hp by 1930.⁶ As of that 12 months, Canada and the U.S. led the globe in hydropower, collectively accounting for about half of world capability (see Determine 2 – notice that this graph represents the 12 months 1930). 

Main installers of hydropower capability, 1898-2023.. https://visualizingenergy.org/what-countries-have-the-greatest-hydropower-capacity/

Electrical energy is a significant driver of the Nice Acceleration. Till just lately, the vast majority of it worldwide was derived from fossil fuels (other than Canada and some different nations). However extra critically, electrical energy not directly permits a lot of our consumption of assets and so a lot of our environmental impacts. Plus, nuclear fission, one other key energetic facet of the Nice Acceleration, has been primarily used to generate electrical energy.

Thus, there’s a sturdy case to be made, based mostly on its hydroelectric historical past, that the Nice Acceleration commenced earlier than the Second World Struggle in Canada (and in the US). In that case, the opening of Ontario Hydro’s Queenston-Chippewa (later renamed Beck No. 1) energy station at Niagara Falls, the world’s largest when it got here on-line in 1922, would possibly function a “golden spike” of types.

Conclusion

Electrifying every thing and creating “inexperienced” energy – photo voltaic and wind particularly – is perhaps the closest factor humanity has to a technological silver bullet within the face of the local weather change menace (see Mark Jacobson’s Nonetheless No Miracles Wanted and Saul Griffiths’s Electrify). Granted, due to the ecological and social impacts of dams and reservoirs, I doubt we needs to be constructing new hydroelectric amenities, however that could be a completely different matter for one more day. 

Fressoz’s Extra and Extra and Extra doesn’t sufficiently stress the truth that what would possibly separate historic power transitions from right this moment’s decarbonization efforts is that we’ve a robust ethical and scientific crucial to make the swap (in fact, the vested pursuits against decarbonization are seemingly stronger than the adversaries of earlier transitions). The e book has different weaknesses too, together with Fressoz’s presentation of a straw man argument about power historiography and his overstating of the novelty of its arguments.

Nonetheless, Fressoz’s arguments in regards to the patterns of previous power transitions are helpful. And working like a thread – or possibly a transmission line could be extra apt – by the modifications of this century and the earlier one is electrical energy. As such, Canada’s hydroelectric historical past means that we might wish to reconceptualize the place to begin of this particular nation’s Nice Acceleration.

Daniel Macfarlane is a Professor within the Faculty of Setting, Geography, and Sustainability at Western Michigan College. He’s an editor for The Otter-La loutre and is a part of the NiCHE government. A transnational environmental historian who focuses on Canadian-American border waters and power points, notably within the Nice Lakes-St. Lawrence basin, Daniel is the creator or co-editor of six books on subjects such because the St. Lawrence Seaway, border waters, IJC, and Niagara Falls. His e book “Pure Allies: Setting, Power, and the Historical past of US-Canada Relations” was revealed in summer season 2023. His latest e book is “The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental Historical past” (September 2024). He’s now engaged on a e book about Lake Michigan, co-editing a e book on the St. Clair River/Delta/Lake, and is planning to ultimately write a e book on the environmental historical past of the Nice Lakes. Web site: https://danielmacfarlane.wordpress.com

1. John R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Nice Acceleration: An Environmental Historical past Since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Press, 2016).
2. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, Extra and Extra and Extra: An All-Consuming Historical past of Power (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2025).
3. Fressoz, 220.
4.  Robert Gordon, Rise and Fall of American Development: The U.S. Commonplace of Residing For the reason that Civil Struggle (Princeton: Princeton College Press, 2016), 122-128.
5. Richard W. Unger and Thistle, Power Consumption in Canada within the nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Statistical Define (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Instituto di Studi sulle Società del Mediterraneo, 2013).
6.  Historic Statistics of Canada, 1st ed, Sequence P1-6, 2nd ed. Sequence Q81-4; desk additionally present in Armstrong and Nelles, Wilderness and Waterpower, 4.