This event was rescheduled from 10:30.

This is a lecture from Colloquium Series Department 1.

In this overview of the author’s ongoing work, the history of forecasting future rates of energy demand at both national and regional scales will be outlined. In doing so, the objective is to show how these forecasting methods played a role in constructing future energy demand rates, with all the consequences that have since followed with regard to energy consumption and global heating. In surveying significant energy demand forecasts, this talk will run through the work of a wide range of forecasts, from William Stanley Jevons, the United States Federal Bureau of Mines, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the RAND Corporation, the American Institute of Physics, and Royal Dutch Shell. In presenting this work, the aim is to provoke thinking about the role of models in shaping our current planetary condition. Moreover, this work is intended to bring the history of science into close engagement with the emerging subfield of energy history.