Chart: 500 Years of Energy Prices

Wary reader will note a couple problems with this chart.

1) Having an arithmetic scale on one side of the chart and a logarithmic scale on the other makes for a nice fitting of the lines but is generally frowned upon.
2) A more informative presentation would be the cost of energy in BTU's per pence.

So why post it?
GFD has some of the most amazing databases around and one day I may want to do a quick-and-dirty on British lumber prices in 1700, et voilà! 

From Global Financial Data (red line: wood, blue: coal, pink: oil):

(click to enlarge)

In today’s markets, when we discuss Wood/Lumber prices as a commodity, it is often related to home building and used by some as a economic indicator as a strength or weakness in the home building segment.

What most don’t realize however, is that Wood has traded as a commodity for over 5 centuries as an Energy source. It wasn’t until Coal and Oil became common place for the commodity to lose it appeal as a major traded commodity.

Wood has been and still is today, a primary source of energy. From cooking and heating to producing steam, we have seen its role change throughout our history. As the use for wood grew, more Europeans discovered uses for the commodity especially after they started using it in furnaces in the steel making process. As the uses for wood continued, Europe began to see rapid deforestation especially from the 15^th -18^th century. What became clear in Europe, is that the trend of the deforestation simple could not continue. By the 1550’s, the English Parliament began passing laws that restricted the use of Wood as a fuel source. In addition, when England went to war with France in 1620, wood and lumber began to show signs of a severe shortage. In order to build its fleet of ships to continue its war efforts, England had to import all of its wood from Scandinavia and from the colonies in the America. Spain who was also active in ship building and war, felled huge sections of its forest to build the famous Spanish Armada. Once the fleet was lost, Spain didn’t have  enough to rebuild it and sought out new supplies of wood from all over the world....MORE