Vaclav Smil: "Fundamental Energy Transitions Can Take a Century"

From IEEE Spectrum, May 26:

One hundred and forty years ago, Thomas Edison began generating electricity at two small coal-fired stations, one in London (Holborn Viaduct), the other in New York City (Pearl Street Station). Yet although electricity was clearly the next big thing, it took more than a lifetime to reach most people. Even now, not all parts of the world have easy access to it. Count this slow rollout as one more reminder that fundamental systemic transitions are protracted affairs.

Such transitions tend to follow an S-shaped curve: Growth rates shift from slow to fast, then back to slow again. I will demonstrate this by looking at a few key developments in electricity generation and residential consumption in the United States, which has reliable statistics for all but the earliest two decades of the electric period....

....MUCH MORE

In addition to being the guy who tutored Bill Gates on energy we used to introduce the good professor thusly:

Vaclav Smil is one of the heavyweights in the Thinking about Energy biz. 

Here, one of his books is reviewed at the journal Nature: "Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities Vaclav Smil, MIT Press (2019)" Reviewed in Nature. 

And a couple posts where Vaclav goes rural:

• "Vaclav Smil Takes on Jeremy Grantham Over Peak Fertilizer"
• Vaclav Smil: Planet of the Cows

And some previous visits at IEEE Spectrum:

Vaclav Smil: "Advanced Economies Must Still Make Things"
Vaclav Smil: "Cellphones as a fifth-order elaboration of Maxwell’s theory"
Calories In, Kilowatts Out: Apparently Sweating Is Important
"Happy Birthday to Moore’s Law" (plus party pooper Vaclav Smil)

And many more. As you can probably tell, we are fans.