Before the Industrial Revolution, humans relied on natural energy flows and animal and human energy 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 combustion 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 Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Most of these phenomena have occurred in industrialized societies, which have come to rely heavily on the 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 – as household incomes increased – ​from traditional fuels such as wood, crop residues and manure to commercial forms of energy. It is difficult to obtain reliable estimates of traditional waste and biomass use. , but these fuels are estimated to represent around 20 percent of global primary energy consumption. Much of this use is concentrated in rural areas of developing countries. The team of oxen increased the power available to human beings tenfold. The water wheel multiplied it sixfold and the steam engine tenfold (UNDP, 2000, p. 3). In total, these innovations increased the power available to humans 600-fold. The development of the steam engine, initially powered by coal, was particularly important. This allowed the provision of energy services to become site independent, as coal could be transported and stored anywhere. Steam engines powered the industrial system and the industrial revolution. At the end of the 19th century, coal met almost all of the primary energy needs of industrialized countries. Although technologies such as the steam engine greatly increased the power available to humans, improvements in energy production and use technologies steadily increased energy efficiency. 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 a continued reduction in the amount of energy required to produce a unit of goods and services in industrialized economies. This has resulted in the “decoupling” between economic production and energy consumption, two measures that until recently were assumed to grow more or less in parallel. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers.Get a custom essayOverall, 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. Interestingly, energy intensity has declined even more rapidly in non-OECD countries, as many of them are modernizing from a fairly inefficient industrial base. It should be emphasized that..