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> hydropower is so abundant Almost all of our current hydropower is based on damns made of concrete. Creating the cement for that is very energy intensive. Als

> hydropower is so abundant Almost all of our current hydropower is based on damns made of concrete. Creating the cement for that is very energy intensive. Also turbines and generators are made of metals which require a lot of energy to melt. Probably you can bootstrap a waterpower based industry somehow without fossil fuels but it is not trivial. The other thing is that each incremental step in such a process has to provide some benefit to the participants. For example you are not going to have generators without readily available good quality copper wire, but bootstrapping a copper refining and wire making industry without fossil fuels is very hard. Those people need to see a reason for doing it in a world where there is no electricity yet therefore there is very little need for said copper wires.

Retric 3y ago
Historically the Industrial Revolution was mostly bootstrapped by hydro / biofuel power. Useful combustion engines were only invented fairly late in the process. You don’t need to start with massive dams, you need to bootstrap industry to get to that point. Even 0.1% of the worlds current electricity generation is a massive amount of energy. There’s this idea that the Industrial Revolution ran on coal but Coal was an inferior fuel for steel production until ~1827 or so. Eventually steam locomotives beat horse / manpower drawn canal boats, but it a close contest until surprisingly recently. Hell the last commercial cargo sailing ship was in use until the 1960’s long after nuclear power became a thing.
adrianN 3y ago
Bootstrapping a hydropower based industry with fossil fuels is not trivial either.
Jensson 3y ago
> Almost all of our current hydropower is based on damns made of concrete. Creating the cement for that is very energy intensive. Is that really harder than building hundreds of kilometers of aqueducts? Humans have known how to engineer water flows for thousands of years, if we valued power we would build those dams. That power would be more expensive so it would slow down the industrial revolution but it would still happen. Also you don't need continuous power for an industrial revolution, that is convenient but factories are still revolutionary even if they just run half the year.

Retric 3y ago

Historically the Industrial Revolution was mostly bootstrapped by hydro / biofuel power. Useful combustion engines were only invented fairly late in the process. You don’t need to start with massive dams, you need to bootstrap industry to get to that point. Even 0.1% of the worlds current electricity generation is a massive amount of energy. There’s this idea that the Industrial Revolution ran on coal but Coal was an inferior fuel for steel production until ~1827 or so. Eventually steam locomotives beat horse / manpower drawn canal boats, but it a close contest until surprisingly recently. Hell the last commercial cargo sailing ship was in use until the 1960’s long after nuclear power became a thing.

adrianN 3y ago

Bootstrapping a hydropower based industry with fossil fuels is not trivial either.

Jensson 3y ago

> Almost all of our current hydropower is based on damns made of concrete. Creating the cement for that is very energy intensive. Is that really harder than building hundreds of kilometers of aqueducts? Humans have known how to engineer water flows for thousands of years, if we valued power we would build those dams. That power would be more expensive so it would slow down the industrial revolution but it would still happen. Also you don't need continuous power for an industrial revolution, that is convenient but factories are still revolutionary even if they just run half the year.