Energy is necessary to heat a house, burn a light, make an engine run or to complete other tasks. Nearly all energy carriers people utilize – gas, coke, coal, oil, peat, water, firewood, wind and the food we eat – ultimately originates from the sun. Their use has also been associated with physical toil. They must be chopped, dug out, lifted and transported. Almost all use of energy entails various types of pollution.
Striving to attain a secure and stable supply of energy is amongst the most important tasks in a modern society. In pre-industrial Norway simple animal and vegetable products were used – tallow candles and oil lamps were used as lighting, wood and peat as fuel. Modernization began only after large amounts of mineral oil were found in the USA in 1859. The paraffin lamp became the main source of lighting in a surprisingly short space of time.
Norway’s first centralized energy plant was the privately owned Christiania Gasværk which opened in 1848, and became municipally owned in 1878. Gas is produced along with coke and tar by burning coal. Like electricity, it differs from other forms of energy by being transported through a system of pipes, and can therefore be quickly distributed over a large area. Gas was especially functional for street lighting, but was in addition used indoors in kitchen stoves and hot water heaters, and to some extent for lighting. Kristiania’s (Oslo’s) first electrical plant was established in 1892, but gas, coke, coal and firewood dominated the city’s energy supply up to the 1920s and 30s. The Oslo Gas Works were closed down in 1978.