Song China's Coal and Coke Fuel Revolution

1080

In northern China's iron-producing districts, the shift from charcoal to coal and coke as smelting fuel reached maturity, solving the deforestation crisis that had threatened to choke off production. The innovation multiplied iron output while sparing forests - an ecological solution born of necessity rather than sentiment. Song China was burning fossil fuels at industrial scale seven centuries before Britain's Industrial Revolution, though the parallel would not be recognized for a thousand years.