Biomass Energies in Industrializing Catalonia: The Changing Role of Firewood and Charcoal in the City and Province of Barcelona (1780-1960)

There is a debate in the international literature between two differing conceptions of the Energy Transition: the so-cal led «energy ladder approach», according to which societies transit from qualitatively inferior forms of energy to superior forms as their income increases, versus the energy aggregate or «energy stacker», in which the consumption of fossil energies is added to that of organic energy sources regardless of changes in income. Our objective is to ascertain which is the dynamic which better reflects Barcelona’s trends of consumption during its industrialization. Although there are many studies on the perspective of energy in general, research on biofuel consumption seems lacking in this particular case study. When we look for sources to undertake that particular approximation, we find that few documents point to the quantities of biofuels consumed; however, there are records of both the quantities which entered the city and the prices of these commodities. Therefore, we combine both sources of information to generate a set of estimation of consumption rates through time, thus analysing the pace and intensity of the Energy Transition. We then present several insights on the changing nature of supply, demand and their spatial relationship. Our main conclusions are the following: first, that the historical experience of Barcelona is better explained by the Energy Stacker Model than by the Energy Ladder Approach, although dynamics characteristic to both models are present. Second, in Barcelona’s context energy consumption was not only determined by supply and demand of energy carriers, but by the availability of the necessary energy converters too. Hi ha un debat a la literatura internacional entre dues concepcions de la Transició Energètica: l’anomenada «visió escalar» de la transició, segons la qual les societats transiten des de fonts d’energia qualitativament inferiors cap a formes superiors a mesura que la seva renda incrementa, versus la «visió additiva o agregada», segons la qual el consum d’energies modernes s’afegeix al de les energies orgàniques tradicionals. El nostre objectiu és dirimir quin d’aquests models explica mil lor el cas de Barcelona durant la seva industrialització. Tot i que hi ha molts estudis sobre el consum d’energies en general, no n’hi ha sobre els combustibles basats en la biomassa des d’aquesta perspectiva. Hi ha poques fonts que permetin un tractament adequat del problema, especialment pel que fa al tema del consum