Energy Consumption Per Capita - Part 1

A Deep Dive Into Somalia's Energy Profile

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Energy = Life

3. The Industrial Revolution

4. Underdeveloped Example: Somalia

5. Somalia’s Energy Profile

6. Concluding Remarks

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Bitesize Edition

• The transition to alternative sources of energy will differ for states in different stages of development. Energy is life, and so underdeveloped and developing nations will take any energy source that is cheap and accessible, providing them with greater capabilities to develop and improve the quality of life for those in the nation.

• If developed nations want a cleaner world, these underdeveloped and developing nations will likely need support.

• Today, we’ll explore how the energy landscape has changed throughout history, before taking an underdeveloped country and exploring its personal energy situation.

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Introduction

Every country in the world is at a different stage of development. The terms I’ll use to describe the level of development can be underdeveloped, developing, and developed. I’ll base this on the World Bank's classification of low-income countries, medium-income countries, and high-income countries.

Energy is life, and so these countries at different levels of development require energy, but some forms of energy suit their needs better than others. Energy hence contributes to the geopolitical game we find nations playing. Today, I’m going to start exploring the energy profile of nations in these different positions and how geopolitics is affected by this.

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Energy = Life

To do anything, you need energy, and so its existence is vital to our survival. We’ve come a long way since the first form of energy: fire. Unfortunately, lighting a fire thousands of years ago had adverse effects, such as alerting enemies to your presence and setting yourself up to get eaten by a lion. Neither sounds particularly fun, but it was necessary for warmth and cooking.

Using animals as a substitute for mechanical energy in agriculture and transportation was also an early use of energy.

We then created some ingenious technologies that acted as facilitators of energy transfer, such as levers, wheels, and pulley systems. These technologies were so revolutionary that we still study them today in everybody’s least favourite physics and mathematics class: mechanics.

Photo by Kiwihug on Unsplash

Some folks then looked out into the ocean, towards the horizon and questioned what could be out there. They decided that swimming was too slow, and we could get eaten by all manner of ocean-dwelling creatures. Hence the wind’s energy aided navigation and transportation through ships and windmills for grinding grain and pumping water.  

For centuries after this, the large majority of energy was through human and animal labour, and the burning of wood. However, we sometimes can reach a period where resources become scarce. This happened in England in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and it can lead to societal collapse. Take Easter Island as an example. In Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, he implies the society on the island destroyed their environment through deforestation and soil degradation, and without access to necessities, they fought for a smaller basket of resources and its population collapsed. If you take one point away from this piece, take this: Energy = Life.