Renewable vs fossil fuel: How a fossil-fuel powered industry pushed a renewable resource out of the ice market in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

• Ingo Heidbrink ^[1]
  1. [1] Old Dominion University

     Old Dominion University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: International journal of maritime history, ISSN 0843-8714, Vol. 34, Nº. 1, 2022, págs. 172-182
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • Artificially produced ice replaced natural ice as a cooling agent in a process of displacement that lasted several decades. This article uses the German market as an example to identify the three main factors that underpinned this process. First, it argues that the displacement process was largely driven by marketing and image campaigns created by the proponents of artificial ice-making technology, together with the general technophilia that prevailed in Imperial Germany. Second, the article shows how Europe’s last major cholera outbreak in Hamburg was utilised to promote the transition from natural to artificial ice, and how public opinion and established knowledge disseminated by public authorities were by no means aligned, with natural ice – particularly imported Norwegian natural ice – becoming a victim of adverse public opinion. Third, the article explains why the fisheries, notably the developing steam trawling industry, which was a major and large-scale industrial user of ice in Germany, continued to use natural ice for a relatively long time regardless of public opinion and any perceived pollution of the ice.

    Rather, decisions to switch from natural to artificial ice in the fisheries were informed by economic and pragmatic reasoning.