Long Run Trends in Energy Services: The Price and Use of Light in the United Kingdom (1500-2000) Roger

Fouquet and Peter J.G. Pearson1 Centre for Energy Policy and Technology Imperial College London September 2003 Summary Before the mid-eighteenth century, most people lived in near-complete obscurity except in the presence of sunlight and moonlight. Since then, the provision of artificial light has been revolutionised by a series of technological innovations and diffusions that have enabled the growing demands of economic development for artificial light to be met at dramatically lower costs: a lumen-hour now costs around one ten-thousandth and we consume around one hundred thousand times more than before this revolution began. The economic history of light shows how focussing on energy service provision rather than energy markets reveals the true decline in costs, enhanced levels of consumption and welfare gains that innovation, market forces and public provision can achieve. I. Introduction Over the last three centuries, technological innovation, mass production of lighting appliances, falling costs of fuels and rising incomes have revolutionised our ability to illuminate, freeing industrialised societies from dependence on sunlight (and moonlight). The purpose of this paper is to present evidence on the decline in the cost of illumination and the associated rise in light use from the eighteenth century to the present day in the United Kingdom. An investigation into the socioeconomic and technological history of lighting identifies useful lessons for our understanding of energy markets. It enables us to analyse the consumption, costs and quality of energy services, rather than energy since demand is for the services of illumination (and other attributes) supplied by the lighting source. It also helps us to understand how energy markets are born, develop and decline.2 II. Economic Growth, Population and General Prices The demand and supply of lighting services are influenced by growth in economic activity, personal wealth and population expansion and migration, as well as by costs and prices. From the eleventh century to the mid-fourteenth century population and economic activity rose quite rapidly. Then in 1347-48 the Black Death - bubonic plague - halved the population and reduced it and economic output back to the levels of two centuries earlier. Figure 1 shows estimates of population and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (at year 2000 prices) for 1500-2000: population took nearly four centuries and per capita income nearly two centuries to recover to their pre-1348 levels; per capita income increased relatively rapidly in the sixteenth century and more slowly during the next century; and population increased relatively quickly from the second half of the eighteenth century, partly in response to the rising living standards associated with the industrial revolution.
1 2

r.fouquet@imperial.ac.uk; p.j.pearson@imperial.ac.uk See also Pearson and Fouquet (2003a, 2003b). 1

A price index needs to be used to deflate any nominal, money-of-the-day fuel price series into real prices. Figure 2 presents a retail price index series for 1500-2000. It shows fairly rapid growth in prices from about 1500 to the middle of the seventeenth century, then a halfcentury of slower rise and stability until about 1750, followed by some later volatility and rapid increases during the twentieth century. III. Candle-light before the Eighteenth Century3 Throughout history, light has been valued in households, in workshops, as well as in commercial and clerical buildings, in churches, streets and along the coast. Before the sixteenth century, lighting methods and costs were broadly similar for indoor and outdoor technologies, except for the need to cover outdoor lights from wind and rain (ODea 1956). Apart from the central light generated by the fireplace for cooking and heating (see Fouquet and Pearson (1998)), candles provided the main source of artificial lighting in the UK. Most candles were made from tallow, or animal fat, rather than, say, bees wax, which was too costly for all but the rich. Tallow was collected after cooking, either domestically or increasingly at a more industrial scale. Many of the rural poor also made their own form of candles, known as rushlight. They collected rushes, spending evenings stripping the reeds and dipping them into tallow. For every pound of rush, six pounds of animal fat was used. One and a half pounds of rushlight would last a family one year (ODea 1958). At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the average household might have consumed around 3,000 lumen-hours of artificial light per year4. In towns, in particular, candles were also produced and sold: by the mid-fourteenth century, wax and the cheaper, more common tallow candles were produced on an industrial scale - royal consent was granted for these activities in the second-half of the fifteenth century (ODea 1958 p.38). From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, there seems to have been a general decline in lighting costs from tallow candles, which is likely to have stimulated consumption. Over that period, the cost of lighting halved from 40,0005 to 20,000 per million lumen-hours (See Figure 3). Candle efficiency is believed to have improved at a modest rate (Bowers 1998) and for this analysis is assumed to be one tenth of 1% (0.1%) per year or about a ten percent improvement every century. One pound of tallow candles might have generated 135 lumenhours (around 0.015 lumen per watt) at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and about 200 by the end of the eighteenth century. The cost of lighting also depended on the cost of the main fuel source, tallow: despite much regional variation, between the early fourteenth and
Further details of data and estimation methods are available from the authors (see also Fouquet and Pearson, 1998). Here we provide a brief note on estimating changing efficiencies. Estimates of the light generated by different technologies are essential for converting the price and consumption of fuels into their equivalents in terms of lighting services. Nordhaus (1997) provides estimates of the lumen-hours per 1,000Btu (and its equivalent in lumens per watt) for each generation of technology and the year in which it was introduced. With these estimates and using a simple diffusion model of generations of lighting technology, we created four time series of the average lighting efficiency (in lumen-hours per 1,000Btu) for each lighting technology: tallow candles, gas lamps, kerosene lamps and electric lights. Between the years (given by Nordhaus) at which different lighting technologies or improvements were introduced series of basic epidemic models of the uptake of the new technologies were developed to generate estimates of average efficiency, based on a weighting of the shares of old and new lighting appliances used. 4 Based on the assumption that per night each family generated light from a small wood fire (of 1 kg with an energy density of 12MJ per kg) producing around 8 lumen-hours (Nordhaus 1997) and (the equivalent of a pound and one half of candles per year, generating around 150 lumen-hours per year or) around 0.5 lumen-hours in 1300. 5 All values are in year 2000 prices, unless otherwise stated. 2
3

the mid-sixteenth century, it fell from around 70 to 20 pence/kWh, probably associated with a decline in the cost of livestock. Candle-light was at its cheapest for several centuries between the 1530s and the 1560s, averaging around 10,000 per million lumen-hours. With a soaring GDP (see Figure 1), it was probably a time of growth in production and of great improvements in lighting standards. After the 1560s and up to the end of the seventeenth century, the cost of candle lighting stayed relatively constant, at just above 10,000. With population rising - from about five to about nine million - and per capita GDP - from 600 to 850, the total use of lighting is likely to have risen once again. IV. Candle-Light in the Eighteenth Century In 1696, lovers of natural light faced the introduction of the Window Tax. At the time, residents paid a tax of two shillings6, four if they had between ten and twenty windows and eight if they had more than twenty windows in their house. It was revised downwards in 1747, by which time smaller houses were exempt. It was intended to reflect the wealth of the inhabitants, as proxied by the number of windows in the house. Inevitably, it operat[ed] as a tax on light, and a cause of deformity in buildings (Mill 1909 p.3.27), and yet was kept until 1851. Moreover, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in Queen Annes reign, a tax on candles (and other articles of general consumption) was proposed to help fund the war of Spanish Succession. Shortly after this proposal, it was noticed that retailers raised candle prices by an amount equal to the proposed tax. Nevertheless, the tax was imposed in 1709 and the cost of lighting was driven up (Dowell 1965 p.307). A duty of four pence per pound was placed on wax candles and half one penny on tallow candles, equivalent to a tax of about 1,000 for a million lumen-hours or a 10% increase. This fed through into the (ten-year) average real price, which rose by 32% between 1711 and 1750, with particularly sharp rises in the 1710s, of course, and also in the 1740s (See Figure 3). The tax was followed by relatively heavy regulation although households were allowed to make their own rushlights, as long as they were not for sale, of small size, and only dipped once in or once drawn through grease (Dowell 1965 p.308). The tax was criticised by several commentators, including Adam Smith, on grounds including its regressive nature, its effect on the price of labour, its tendency to encourage fraudulent production of candles at the expense of honest chandlers, and the cost of regulation. The duty on candles was not fully repealed until 1830 (Dowell 1965 p.310). Nevertheless, the tax collection data provide a first indicator of national candlelight consumption (Mitchell 1988 p.398): In 1711, around 30 million pounds of tallow candles generated some 17 billion lumen-hours (See Figure 4). Up to 1750, overall candlelight consumption changed little, however. There must have been considerable upward pressure on demand from a more than 20% rise in per capita income over that period. Nevertheless, since population rose by around 10% to 10 million, per capita consumption fell. With the window and candle taxes increasing the cost of natural and artificial light, the first half of the eighteenth century could be seen as another kind of dark age.

In current (2000) money, this is equivalent to eight pounds for a house with less than ten windows, when the average annual income was nearly one thousand pounds thus, nearly one percent of income. 3

It might be expected that tax-induced price increases would create incentives to improve the efficiency of lighting provision. Evidence suggests that the quality of candles did improve dramatically between the end of the eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. For example, by 1840, Prices Candles were able to build on the French chemist Chevreuils research on fatty acids to refine tallow and vegetable oils to produce a harder, pure white fat known as stearine; candles made from this burnt brightly with little smoke or smell (Newman, 2003), p 12. Also, moulding processes and plaited wicks were developed and refined, which reduced the cost and improved the efficiency of candlelight provision (ODea 1958 p.54). These improvements meant that a pound of tallow candles in the 1830s could produce more than 500 lumens per hour equivalent to 0.075 lumens per watt (Nordhaus 1997 p.36). As a result, candles continued to be a main source of lighting up to the midnineteenth century and afterwards were valued as complements to other lighting methods. Indeed, lighting use doubled in the second half of the century (See Figure 4). With the real price of light falling by more than 25% and population rising by 50%, this is hardly surprising. Evidence suggests that by 1800 over 60 million pounds of tallow candles produced 35 billion lumen-hours. V. Oil Lamps before the Nineteenth Century The oil lamp was another source of lighting services. Vegetable oils, principally from rapeseed (or colza) in Britain, were said to burn exceedingly well in lamps (Nash in BPP 1816 p.177), although they were of limited availability for lighting and were used mostly indoors (Mellish in BPP 1816 p.189). The most basic lighting oil was fish oil, particularly cheap in coastal areas: when the candle tax was introduced, households were only allowed to use oil lamps if they were fuelled by fish oil. The smell and poor quality of illumination meant it was a poor-persons fuel, however. Whale oil represented an improvement on fish oil and since it was not realised that whales were not fish, the candle tax regulation seems not to have prohibited its use (Jackson 1976 p.20)). Oil from the Right whale was a common source of lighting from the sixteenth century, while from the eighteenth century until the early nineteenth century, oil from Sperm whales was the product of choice for lamps, because of its better quality illumination. Sperm oil was used exclusively for illumination. In addition to the oil, spermaceti wax, found in this whales brain cavity, was made into candles that gave light that was better than traditional tallow candles and equivalent to (but at less cost) than beeswax candles. As with candles, demand for all forms of lighting had been rising since the fourteenth century. Greater household wealth demanded better ways of keeping active after sunset (Jackson 1978 p.56). Mechanisation and growth of the textile industry created a need for lighting to extend factory working hours. And, urbanisation, as many fled the countryside, called for improvements in street lighting, mainly to enhance public safety. The illumination of town and city streets, and other public areas, became an important driver for technological change. In the first decades of the fifteenth century, town lighting regulations began to be introduced, requiring certain citizens to place a lanthorn in front of their doors. This probably also reflected a decline in the cost of lighting in the early 1400s, which would have made such regulations less onerous than before. By Elizabethan times, all (non-poor) citizens on main roads had to provide light in front of their buildings (Falkus 1976 p.252). This remained the main basis for regulating street lighting until the end of the seventeenth century. As the rate of urbanisation increased (for example, Londons population had grown two and a half times during the seventeenth century), lighting became increasingly seen as a basic amenity that local authorities should be responsible for providing.

Throughout the seventeenth century, there was a shift towards oil lamps for street lighting, especially after major reductions in the cost of whale oil throughout the seventeenth century and efficiency improvements in the 1680s. Despite great volatility, the cost of whale oil lighting fell from more than 30,000 per million lumen hours in the sixteenth century to between 10,000 and 15,000 in the mid-eighteenth century (See Figure 3). By the early eighteenth century, most towns had companies responsible for supplying streetlight (Falkus 1976 p.257). In the first few decades of the eighteenth century, to cover the expenses and fund extra lighting, towns across Britain started raising lighting rates more systematically. By 1736 parts of London had lighting 365 days a year. They also had many more lamps (See Table 1). In the second-half of the eighteenth century, most important towns adopted Improvement Commissions responsible for a standard supply of public amenities. Street lighting improved substantially in this period.
Table 1: Street Lighting in London (1599-1809) Pre-1599 1599166216941662 1694 1736 Hours/year 189 303 351 750 Lamps 1,000 Source: Falkus (1976 p.261) By 1736 4,000 4,800 By 1750 4,000 15,000 By 1809 4,000 35,000

As early as 1673, a protectionist British government imposed a nine pound per ton tax on Dutch imported whale oil, when the price per ton was about twenty-one pounds (2,100 in year 2000 money), equivalent to 18,000 per million lumen hours, if used for lighting purposes, and soon an infant British Colonial (principally, North American) whaling industry flourished. By the 1720s heavy whaling activity drove the price down to seven pounds per ton (Jackson 1978 p.51). However, this soon led to a shortage of coastal stocks and higher prices, creating a demand for larger whalers seeking stocks further afield. In the 1750s hostilities between the British and the French over North American territories interrupted the supply routes to English ports, creating opportunities for a British whaling industry. In the first few decades, a bounty of 40 shillings (200 in current (2000) money) per ton was a key incentive for the industry and is evidence of the growing dependence on imports. When Franco-British hostilities ended in 1763, the Colonists again became the main whale oil suppliers. However, American independence then came at a price to the whalers, now paying a heavy import duty on what had become foreign rather than colonial products. John Adams, an American and future president, lobbied the British Government: ... you prefer darkness, consequent robberies, burglaries and murders in your streets, to the receiving, as a remittance, our spermaceti oil (Jackson 1978 p.70). The lights did not go out, since many of the main whaling families moved to London. In 1750, around 370 million lumen-hours seem to have been generated from about 3,000 tons of sperm and whale oil; and while whale oil made up nine-tenths of this total, sperm oil was about twice as effective in providing illuminating. By 1774, the oils (30% from sperm oil) generated just over one billion lumen-hours. And although lighting from sperm and whale oils fell back to less than 300 million lumen-hours in 1781, once hostilities ceased whale and sperm oil imports resurged, reaching more than 1.8 billion lumen-hours by 1787. The growth in lighting was the result of increased supply, related declining prices of oil and major efficiency gains in energy conversion. Improvements in oil lamp technology from the

1780s were associated with the Argand lamp, in which a chimney was placed over the flame for better aeration and, then the bird-fountain feed, which ensured that there was always the same level of oil in the reservoir, providing a better supply to the wick (ODea 1958 p.40). These improvements doubled and, eventually with refinements, tripled the efficiency of oil lamps. As a result, the cost of lighting from lamps fell substantially over that period, from about 15,000 per million lumen-hours in 1750 to 5,000 by 1820. After a sluggish end of the century, with consumption at 1.7 billion lumen-hours, the trend in consumption reverted upwards, rising to 3.4 billion lumen-hours in 1805 and 4.7 billion lumen-hours by 1820. VI. Light in the Gas Era (1820-1920) In 1800, the average family might have generated nearly 50,000 lumen-hours per year7, although most of this would still be a valued by-product of cooking and heating, rather an energy service sought directly. As we have seen, up to the early nineteenth century, the active production of artificial light was based on relatively primitive fuels and technologies, mostly tallow candles and basic oil lamps. These technologies required frequent manual re-stocking and were awkward. Oil lamps smoked in draughts, were difficult to supply with the correct rate of fuel, and would smell bad when cheaper oils were used (Bowers 1989). Candles required frequent wick trimming to avoid smoking and guttering, which tended to generate sparks. The threat of fires was constant. Factories developed safety regulations, took out insurance policies and frequently kept their own fire engines (Falkus 1982 p.220). Increasing demand for higher-quality lighting had generated a large body of research into developing better illumination. From the 1770s, the Royal Society handed out many prizes and awards for lighting improvements. Similarly, the number of lighting patents rose dramatically, 14 in the 1790s and 29 the next decade (Falkus 1982 p.218). And, when the byproducts of the coking process were used for lighting, the Times claimed that .. there is nothing so important to the British Realm, since that of Navigation, ..[as] the grand discovery of the Gas Lights.. (quoted in Falkus 1982 p.226). In 1812, the Gas Light and Coke Company received the first charter to supply parts of London and, after eighteen months of errors in equipment investment and design, the market for gas-lighting grew quickly as prices fell. In 1820, gas lighting cost around 3,000 per million lumen-hours. By 1840, it had fallen to 1,000 and then, by 1850, to below 500 per million lumen-hours (See Figure 5). The dramatic cost decline was to generate the first of three phases of growth in the demand. Gas lighting rose ten-fold - from around 25 billion lumen-hours in 1820 to 250 billion in 1850 (See Figure 6). The growing wealth and associated desire for comforts, the accelerating industrialisation and the increased urbanisation of Britain were also factors driving the demand. Initial demand was for public street lighting, commercial establishments (especially shops), and some wealthy households. By the 1840s, middle class families were starting to use gas in their homes.
Based on the assumptions: (a) in 1800 domestic consumption of coal was about 5.6 million tonnes and the population was about 16 million (or roughly 4 million households) - hence the average family uses 1.4 tonnes of coal per year (with an energy density double that of wood and the same lumen-hours per watt see Footnote 1) and, therefore, generates about 45,000 lumen-hours per year (or 120 lumen-hours per night) from coal fires; and (b) estimating a national consumption of artificial light of around 20 billion lumen-hours from other sources, of which half (following the domestic sectors share of total coal consumption at the time) was consumed by the domestic sector, then each household generates 2,500 lumen-hours. Adding these together, the average household generates around 47,500 lumen-hours. 6
7

In the mid-nineteenth century, the demand for all forms of lighting was growing, while candles and oil lamps continued to be the main source of illumination for many, particularly poorer households. The dramatic improvements in tallow candles, generating about 0.075 lumen per watt, reflected in the growth of Prices Candle Company, established in 1830, meant that candle-light had become much cheaper than before with costs nearly halving between 1800 and 1830 to 3,500 per lumen-hour (See Figure 3). Throughout most of the second-half of the nineteenth century, candlelight cost less than 1,500 per million lumenhours. Despite the competition, candlelight consumption increased from 20 billion lumenhours in 1800 to 75 billion lumen-hours in 1830 and, at times in the second half of the nineteenth century, it rose to nearly 100 billion lumen-hours (See Figure 6). The introduction of mineral oils, principally kerosene (or paraffin), provided a new source of lighting for lamps. In particular, the growth of the American petroleum industry from the 1860s signalled the abundant availability of a lighting fuel that required little equipment and infrastructure. In contrast to the extremely volatile supply of whale oil, there was now a potentially large supply of a high-quality lighting fuel (Yergin 1991 p.22). In the 1860s, the price of lighting oil lamps using kerosene was more than 1,500 per million lumen-hours (See Figure 5). But the rapid expansion of the industry drove down prices: by 1870, 500 worth of kerosene would generate one million lumen-hours, while by 1900 the cost had fallen to around 200. Consumption responded accordingly. By 1870, kerosene lamps, with a lighting efficiency of about 0.159 lumens per watt, generated 3.3 billion lumen-hours. The following decade saw a six-fold increase to nearly 20 billion lumen-hours. It tripled throughout the 1880s and more than doubled in the 1890s, as it reached over 1,500 billion lumen hours in 1900 (See Figure 7). But the gas-lighting industry was to show its resilience. After 1850, gas prices were initially stable with even a slight increase in the mid-1860s. Then lighting costs began to fall again to 200 per million lumen-hours by 1880, 130 by 1890 and just over 100 by 1900 (See Figure 5). While the gas price remained little changed through the second half of the century, gas lighting efficiency tripled after the introduction of the incandescent mantle (Nordhaus 1997), invented by Auer von Welsbach and improved further in the early part of the twentieth century. Gaslight consumption grew dramatically in the second-half of the nineteenth century. Because demand was mostly non-industrial, it was less vulnerable fluctuations induced by business cycles. In every decade of the second-half of the nineteenth century, growth always averaged more than 60%. In the 1850s, consumption grew by 140% and, in the 1880s, by 156%. In 1850, an estimated 267 billion lumen-hours of light were produced. By 1900, 8,650 billion lumen-hours were generated (See Figure 7). Once again, declining cost was a central but not the only factor responsible for the major switch to gas for lighting. By the turn of the century, working class living standards had improved substantially, and with them demands for better quality lighting. Also, the introduction of the coin in the slot meter attracted many new customers. First used in London in 1893, by 1914 two-thirds of the customers used it. In that time, London Gas Company customers increased from less than 300,000 to over 1,280,000, representing most of Londons households (Matthews 1986).

VII. The Expansion of Electric Lighting (1890-1939) Electricity had shown promise since the eighteenth century, but lighting applications only began to be commercialised in the mid-nineteenth century. Arc lighting was used increasingly from the late 1860s for illuminating large areas, like markets, stations, stadiums and lighthouses. It had large economies of scale but was impractical for indoor lighting. In the late 1870s, Swan, in the UK, and Edison, in the USA, patented the incandescent light bulb, which could generate around 2.6 lumens per watt and enabled electricity to brighten up shops, offices and homes (ODea 1956). By 1888, more than 80 private companies and local authorities were supplying electricity; by the mid-1890s, most towns had an electricity supplier. Electricity prices fell from around 2 per kWh in 1883 to just over 1.15 by 1900. Lack of storage capabilities, however, forced companies to keep a reserve capacity for unexpected surges in demand and to limit the frequency of black-outs. So, despite the introduction of off-peak pricing in 1900, the need for reserve capacity kept upward pressure on the price of electricity. Nevertheless, prices continued to fall to 0.70 in 1910 and 0.20 in 1920. Meanwhile, the efficiency of electric lamps was improving. In 1879, the carbon filament lamp generated 3 lumens per watt. By 1897 efficiency had more than doubled to 7 lumens, with the introduction of the osmium filament lamp, and over 10 lumens per watt when gasfilled tungsten lamps were used in 1913 (ODea 1956). Declining energy prices and rising technical efficiency led to the dramatic fall in the costs of electric lighting services. Starting in the mid-1880s, from around 900 per million lumen-hours, which was four times more expensive than gas-light, the cost of electric lighting dropped to about 340 by 1900 (See Figure 5). The decline in the cost of electric lighting continued down to 180 in 1910 and below 40 by 1920 less than one twentieth of what had been thirty years before. By then, in cost terms, electric lighting had finally caught up with gas lighting. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the gas lighting industry had also achieved major improvements: refinements associated with the gas mantle meant that, compared with lamps from the 1880s, three times as much light could be generated from the same amount of gas by 1920, and until then gas managed to out compete electricity. The cost of gas lighting had fallen from 120 per million lumen-hours in 1900 to 30 in 1920 (See Figure 8). Gas lighting consumption peaked at over 20,000 billion lumen-hours in 1920 (See Figure 9). Initially, the demand for electric lighting was in streets and other outdoor locations. In 1895, consumption was 45 billion lumen hours, which was less illumination than was generated from candles. Consumption increased more than five-fold in five years, seven-fold in the first decade of the twentieth century, and then just over three-fold in the second decade, to 6,000 billion lumen hours by 1920 (See Figure 9). This was nearly a third of the consumption of gas for lighting. And, yet, by as late as 1919, only six percent of households were wired to an electricity supplier (Jones p.89). The industry was severely affected by a lack of coordination, with many companies using different voltages and frequencies. Better coordination would enable companies to link up their distribution networks, minimising the extra reserve capacity required, since the likelihood that all areas connected suffer unexpected surges in demand at the same time falls as the number of connected areas increases. In 1933, the National Grid was completed, saving electricity suppliers substantial capital, fuel and running costs. These savings led to

another drop in prices (See Figure 10). Falling prices from 1933 to 1942, coupled with the mass production of electrical appliances, increased the demand for electricity. By 1938, two thirds of UK houses had electricity supply. VIII. Post-Second World War Electricity Low electricity prices and coal shortages after the war helped electricity consumption to rise to three times higher in 1948 than it had been in 1938. The government was catalysed into nationalising electricity production and supply. The period up to the first oil shock of 197374 saw declining prices of electric lighting. Despite minimal improvements in light bulb efficiency (now around 12 lumens per watt) there were major increases in the consumption of light from 200,000 billion lumen hours in 1945 to 1 million billion in 1973 (See Figure 11). From 1973 to 1995, there was no increase in consumption and only a little cyclical fluctuation. Then, since the advent of compact fluorescent lights, which in the early 1990s produced 62 lumens per watt, and the decline in electricity prices associated with competition and liberalisation, the amount of light provided has started rising once again. By the late 1990s it was estimated that the average household in the UK used 720 kWh - over 10 million lumen-hours per year (Palmer and Boardman 1998). IX. Conclusion Through technological, market and public policy developments, our ability to live and work in clarity has radically transformed our economy and society, The economic and technological history of light shows how a focus on energy service provision - rather than just energy markets - reveals the remarkable declines in costs, increases in consumption and welfare gains that have been achieved, especially since the mid eighteenth hundreds. Today a lumen-hour costs around 10,000 times less then before this revolution began. The average family uses 200 times more light per year, while as an economy we consume around 100,000 times more (See Figure 12). The history of the evolution of artificial light in the UK illustrates the kinds of dramatic improvements that can be achieved in energy services. It presents examples of the evolution of demand as income rises, lighting service prices fall and the attributes associated with the fuels and technologies that generate energy services change and are refined. There are cases of price-induced innovation, apparent sailing-ship effects (where an incumbent technology, threatened by a new technology, improves dramatically), and rebound effects (i.e. where energy efficiency improvements lead to overall increases in consumption). There are also instances of extreme price volatility resulting from over-exploitation of renewable natural resources, of energy service companies being formed, and of government policies to provide public goods and ensure the security of supply of vital lighting fuels. In our future work we hope to draw out more clearly some of the lessons for current policy that can be drawn from this story of light. References
Administrative Council of London (1920) Electricity Supply 1917-1920. London County Council. London. Anderson, J.L. (1981). Climatic change in European economic history. Research in Economic History 6: 1-34.

Beveridge, W. (1894). Prices and Wages in England: From the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Bowers, B. (1998) Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Defoe, D. (1719) The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Department of Trade and Industry (1997 and backdates) Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics. London: HMSO. Falkus, M.E. (1967) The British Gas Industry before 1850. Economic History Review XX 494-508. Falkus, M. (1976). Lighting in the Dark Ages of English economic history. in D.C. Coleman and A.H. John, eds., Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Falkus M.E. (1982) The early development of the British Gas Industry, 1790-1815. Economic History Review XXXV 217-34. Fouquet, R and Pearson, PJG (1998), A Thousand Years of Energy Use in the United Kingdom, The Energy Journal, 19(4). Fouquet, R and Pearson, P.J.G. (2003a), Long Run Trends in Energy Services: The Price and Use of Road and Rail Transport in the UK (1300-2000), Proceedings of the BIEE Conference, St Johns College Oxford, September (CD-ROM). Fouquet, R and Pearson, P J G (2003b), Five Centuries of Energy Prices, World Economics, 4(3), July-Sept. Francis, D. (1990) A History of World Whaling. Viking: Penguin Books. London. Fussel, G. (1955) History of Cole. Nature CLXXVI no.4471 p.47-51. Hannah, L. (1979). Electricity Before Nationalisation. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Jackson, G. (1976) The British Whaling Trade. A & C Black Ltd. London. Jones, C.L. (1989). Coal, gas and electricity, in R. Pope, ed., Atlas of British Economic and Social History since 1700. London: Routledge. Landes, D.S. (1969). The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthews, D. (1986) Laissez-faire and the London Gas Industry in the nineteenth Century: another look. Economic History Review XXXIX 244-63. Mill, J.S. (1909) Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. Book V. London: Longmans, Green and Co. 7th ed. Ministry of Fuel and Power (1951). Statistical Digest 1950. London: HMSO. Ministry of Power (1961). Statistical Digest 1960. London: HMSO. Mitchell, B.R. (1988). British Historical Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Newman, J. (2003). A Short History of Prices Patent Candle Company Ltd., pers. communication. Nordhaus, W. D. (1997). Do real output and real wage measures capture reality? The history of lighting suggests not, in T.F. Breshnahan and R. Gordon, eds., The Economics of New Goods. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ODea, W.T. (1958) The Social History of Lighting. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. London. Office of National Statistics (1997). Economic Trends. London: HMSO. Palmer, J. and Boardman, B. (1998) DELight, Environmental Change Unit. University of Oxford. Oxford. Phelps-Brown, H. and S.V. Hopkins (1956). Seven centuries of the prices of consumables, compared with builders wage-rates. Economica 23: 92-110. Rogers J.E.T. (1865, 1882, 1886). A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. Vol I-VI. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schofield, R. (1994). British population change, 1700-1871. in M. Floud, and D. McCloskey, eds., The Economic History of Britain since 1700: Vol I (1700-1860). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, T.I. (1981) A History of the British Gas Industry. Oxford University Press. Oxford.

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Figure 1. Population and real Gross Domestic Product per capita in the United Kingdom (at year 2000 prices), 1500-2000

Figure 2. Retail Price Index in the United Kingdom, 1500-2000

GDP per capita

Population

Figure 3. The Price of Lighting from Tallow Candles and Whale Oil in the United Kingdom (per million lumen-hours), 1300-1900

Figure 4. Consumption of Lighting from Tallow Candles and Whale Oil in the United Kingdom (in billion lumen-hours), 1711-1900

Candlelight Whale Oil light

Whale Oil light Candlelight

Figure 5. Price of Lighting from Gas, Kerosene and Electricity in the United Kingdom (per million lumen-hours), 1800-2000
Gaslight

Figure 6. Consumption of Lighting from Gas, Kerosene and Tallow Candles in the United Kingdom (in billion lumen-hours), 1800-1850

Kerosene-light

Electric-light

Gaslight

Candlelight

Figure 7. Consumption of Lighting from Gas and Kerosene in the United Kingdom (in billion lumen-hours), 1850-1900

Figure 8. Price of Lighting from Gas and Electricity in the United Kingdom (per million lumen-hours), 1900-2000

Electric-light

Gaslight Gaslight

Kerosene-light

Figure 9. Consumption of Lighting from Gas, Kerosene and Electricity in the United Kingdom (in billion lumen-hours), 1900-1950

Figure 10. Price of Lighting from Electricity in the United Kingdom (per million lumen-hours), 1930-2000

Electric-light

Gaslight

Figure 11. Consumption of Lighting from Electricity in the United Kingdom (in billion lumen-hours), 1950-2000

Figure 12. Consumption of Lighting from Candles, Gas, Kerosene and Electricity in the United Kingdom (in billion lumen-hours), 1700-2000

Electricity

Gas TOTAL LIGHTING Kerosene Candles