Prime Movers of Globalization

Smil argues that modern globalisation rests on two machines: the high-compression non-sparking internal combustion engine invented by Rudolf Diesel, and the gas turbine developed by Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain. He gives each a full technical and economic history, from the invention through the engineering development to the current fleet.

The argument is quantitative. Diesel engines move essentially all ocean freight and most land freight, and their thermal efficiency, now above fifty percent for large marine engines, is what makes intercontinental shipping cost so little per tonne-kilometre that distance stopped mattering for production location. Gas turbines move people and high-value freight by air and generate a large share of electricity, and their power-to-weight ratio is what made mass air travel possible. Smil supplies the efficiency curves, the fleet numbers, the fuel consumption figures and the development timelines, and he shows that both technologies took decades from invention to commercial dominance.

The wider point he presses is about the pace of technological transition. Both prime movers required roughly fifty years from working prototype to widespread deployment, and both remain without practical substitutes at the scale they operate. Smil uses this to argue against expectations of rapid energy transitions. The book is technical, dense with engineering detail, and written for readers willing to follow specifications. It is not a business book and it makes no strategic recommendations. Its data ends around 2009, and the subsequent development of battery electric transport and of alternative marine fuels is a live test of his substitution scepticism.

Distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba; writes quantitative histories of energy, food, materials and technical change.

Each book counts the physical inputs an economy consumes - joules, tonnes of steel, ammonia, cement - and establishes the historical rates at which past energy transitions actually moved. Those numbers let an investor size decarbonisation timelines and test claims about how fast an energy system can be rebuilt.

University of Manitoba