Basically, bioeconomy is nothing new. For thousands of years, mankind covered its needs for food, materials, consumer goods and energy through renewable raw materials and renewable sources. The muscle power of humans and farm animals, eventually reinforced by mechanical aids, formed the basis of their economic activity, the primary fuel of which was wood. In addition, there was wind and water for the mills, wind for the sailing ships and, above all, the rays of the sun. Almost all of the energy available on earth comes from these. Even if plants absorb only a part of it and less than 1% is used in the process of photosynthesis, solar energy generates many billions of tons of biomass in the sea and on land every year. Less than a tenth of these plants are eaten by animals, which, in turn, provide a small part of the food for carnivores and people who draw their energy from them. This energy and the heat generated by burning wood, peat and other biomass drove the economies of pre-industrial times: Until about 1780, all societies on this earth were bio- economies. But even then, humankind changed the landscape and adapted it to its needs. It created a cultural landscape that, to the furthest extent possible, no longer resembled the natural landscape as it would have developed without human intervention. Even then, humankind "overused" natural resources – with relevant consequences, such as permanent erosion and overgrazing and disasters such as famines. Even then, the use of natural resources alone did not guarantee sustainability.
Then, the industrial revolution came about and began massively to transform the earth and its landscape. The centre of this revolution was in Europe. Encouraged by the invention of the steam engine, which was able to convert combustion heat into mechanical labour, coal – initially in England – emerged as the most important source of energy, whereas it had merely been a special energy carrier for the smelting of iron in the previous centuries. Outside of northwestern Europe, however, the use of coal in production processes did not become noticeable macro-economically before the 1820s. This had far-reaching consequences: "Coal sets steam engines in motion, and steam engines move spindles and pumps, ships and railways. The era of fossil fuels that began in the third decade of the 19th century was therefore not only one of an unprecedented production of goods, but also an era of networking, speed, national integration and facilitated imperial control" (Osterhammel 2009). Industrialization accelerated economic development and – coupled with scientific progress in medicine and the natural sciences – laid the foundation for the fastest known development of a species in Earth’s history.
The rise of coal as an energy source took place only gradually, but, around 1890, coal had overtaken biomass as the most important energy source worldwide. Between 1850 and 1914, global coal production increased 16-fold to around 1300 million tonnes per year. 43% of these were mined in the USA, followed by Great Britain, with a share of 25%, and Germany, with a share of 15% (Osterhammel 2009). Hard coal supplied not only energy, but also raw materials for the manufacture of new products, which primarily originated from the coal tar that resulted from her coking. This made it possible to manufacture synthetic dyes and medicines, which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, led to the emergence and rise of the chemical industry.
At the same time, crude oil began its career as a second fossil fuel. Its first commercial spring was developed in 1859 in the US state of Pennsylvania. The decisive impetus for the birth of this industry came from the development of a process for refining gasoline in the 1890s and from worldwide automobilization resulting from the introduction of combustion engines in the twentieth century. Only then did it find a broad basis through the discovery of large oil deposits in Russia, the USA, Mexico, Iran, Arabia, and other countries, creating the basis for worldwide industrialization and the global integration of human economic activity. Due to its greater yield and flexibility, after World War II, crude oil replaced coal as the primary source of raw materials for chemical production. This means that, today, around 90% of the basic chemicals used in all chemical value chains are created from crude oil and petroleum gas. In addition to the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, paints, lacquers and detergents, the production of plastics and fibres is of particular importance. Until about 1965, coal remained the predominant fossil fuel. Only then did crude oil displace it from the top position, while natural gas established itself in third place (McNeill and Engelke 2013).
Today, the primary energy consumption of humankind has reached dimensions that can only be represented in unimaginably high units of numbers (Fig. 1).
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| Fig. 1 A scale of our energy consumption. (Source: Davis et al. 2014) |
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| Fig. 2 Development and projection of total global energy consumption. (BGR 2015) |
Expressed in petroleum equivalents, this consumption is around 14 Gt per year, which corresponds to the energy produced by burning 14 billion tonnes of oil and can be converted into around 580 EJ. Fossil fuels account for almost 80% thereof. It is estimated that this share will fall to just over 70% by 2040, despite the persistently steep rise in demand for energy (. Fig. 2). In terms of continents and countries, energy consumption is very unevenly distributed. At the beginning of our century, for example, the average consumption of a North American was 70 times higher than that of an inhabitant of East African Mozambique (McNeill and Engelke 2013). This reflects the asynchronous and asymmetrical course of the fossil age in terms of economic geography and power politics that has existed from its very beginning. As early as "around 1910 or 1920, the world fell into a minority of those who had achieved access to fossil energy stores and established the infrastructure necessary for their use, and the majority of those who had to get along with traditional energy sources under growing pressure of scarcity" (Osterhammel 2009).
As a result, the fact that, "for a century after 1850, high energy consumption was limited mainly to Europe and North America and, to a lesser extent, to Japan ... is probably one of the most important reasons for the political and economic dominance of these regions in the international system" (McNeill and Engelke 2013). On the other hand, since 1960, these countries in particular have been confronted with the demands of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a cartel whose power they felt during the two oil crises in 1973 and 1979, because their prosperity depended on provision with crude oil. This was also evident in Germany. "While the Federal Republic of Germany, with its coal, was almost energy self- sufficient at the beginning of the 1960s, two decades later, it had become dependent on imports by a share of 61%" (Rödder 2015).