Before the Industrial Revolution, humans relied on natural energy flows and animal and human power for heat, light, and work. Draft animals, wind and water were the only sources of mechanical energy. The only form of energy conversion (from chemical energy to heat and light) came from the burning of various forms of biomass. Energy consumption per capita does not exceed 0.5 tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) per year. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Most of this occurred in industrialized societies, which had come to rely heavily on the ready availability of energy. On a per capita basis, people in these societies now use more than 100 times the amount of energy their ancestors used before humans learned to harness the energy potential of fire. As societies industrialized, they not only began to use more energy, but they also began to use energy in different forms, typically switching, as family incomes increased, from traditional fuels such as wood, agricultural residues and dung to commercial forms of energy. It is difficult to obtain reliable estimates on the use of traditional waste and biomass. , but these fuels are estimated to represent approximately 20% of total primary energy consumption. Much of this use is concentrated in rural areas of developing countries. Harnessing oxen increased the power available to humans tenfold. The water wheel increased this by a further factor of six and the steam engine by another factor of ten (UNDP, 2000, p. 3). Collectively, these innovations increased the power available to humans by a factor of 600. The development of the steam engine, initially fueled by coal, was particularly important. It allowed the provision of energy services to become site independent because coal could be transported and stored anywhere. Steam engines powered the factory system and the industrial revolution. By the end of the 19th century, coal provided nearly all of the primary energy needs of industrializing countries. Even as technologies such as the steam engine greatly increased the power available to humans, improvements in energy production and use technologies steadily increased efficiency globally. what energy could be converted into different forms and used to provide goods and services. Massive improvements in the efficiency of technologies and devices have facilitated continued reductions in the amount of energy required to produce a unit of goods and services in industrialized economies. This has led to the “decoupling” of economic production from energy consumption, two measures that, until recently, were assumed to grow more or less in lockstep with each other. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Overall, the energy intensity of OECD countries, where energy intensity is measured simply as the ratio of GDP to primary energy consumption, has declined in recent years at an average rate of 1.3% per year. year. Interestingly, energy intensity has declined even faster in non-OECD countries, because many are in the process of modernizing from a rather inefficient industrial base. It is worth emphasizing that electricity intensity in the world is not decreasing. As a result, electricity growth has exceeded the rate of in recent years.