Too Decentralised to Ignore
Revisiting an old idea whose time might finally come
Change often begins where no one is looking — until it’s too big to ignore.
— Today’s Twaddle ..
Introduction
Sometimes an idea appears too simple to threaten anything — and yet it quietly unsettles everything. That’s the story behind the coal briquette, a small, clean-burning fuel made from coal dust and clay, proposed as early as the 1590s. As Anton Howes notes in All Fired Up, it was efficient, practical, and capable of being made at home — a decentralised solution long before such language existed. And for that reason, perhaps, it never stood a chance.
Coal briquettes allowed ordinary people to generate fuel locally, bypassing the growing centralised supply chains of coal distribution. They were repeatedly proposed, praised, and then forgotten. Not because they didn’t work — but because they worked too well, too far outside the systems designed to manage energy and extract value from it.
Today, Community Energy Resources (CERs) — from rooftop solar to local microgrids — echo this history. They, too, offer decentralised promise. But might they also face the same barriers? Or has something fundamental shifted in how we think about power — and who gets to generate it?
A Revolution in the Wrong Century
Some ideas arrive long before the conditions that can protect them.
In the early modern period, the coal briquette was a solution without a system. It emerged not from official programmes or industrial strategy, but from individuals and tinkerers — people like Hugh Plat — experimenting with domestic energy autonomy.
Their innovation posed no immediate technical problem. The challenge was structural:
It sidestepped centralised fuel supply: Coal dust could be collected and reused locally, reducing dependence on imported coal.
It redistributed capability: Anyone with basic materials could create energy, which made the idea hard to tax, measure, or control.
It lacked a championing institution: Without central or commercial backers, it was relegated to the margins.
This was a decentralised energy revolution before the grid — and it emerged in a world unprepared to accommodate it.
To understand the enduring appeal of such autonomy, we need to consider how energy at the household level continues to disrupt established norms.
When Power Comes from Below
Autonomy often starts with the smallest act of making.
The coal briquette was made in kitchens, backyards, and cellars. It didn’t rely on scale, logistics, or expert intervention. It offered control, not convenience — which may have been its most radical feature.
Today’s Community Energy Resources continue that trajectory:
They enable household-level generation: Rooftop solar, battery storage, and small wind offer localised control.
They build resilience outside the grid: Microgrids and community storage systems serve areas often overlooked by central providers.
They reframe users as participants: People become producers, not just consumers, of energy.
These dynamics create value, but they also generate friction — not because they don’t work, but because they shift the balance of power.
This friction has deep roots, as shown by the failure of older decentralised ideas to gain a foothold within centralised systems.
The System That Couldn’t Flex
Even the best ideas fail when the structures around them stay fixed.
Imperial Britain built its energy economy on central control — fuel was taxed, traded, and shipped across long distances. Decentralisation introduced logistical uncertainty and political discomfort.
Some recurring tensions made coal briquettes untenable:
Control over taxation: Locally produced fuel escaped fiscal visibility.
Infrastructural mismatch: Supply chains and merchant systems had little interest in enabling home fuel production.
Perceived lack of prestige: Home-spun solutions didn’t fit elite ideals of progress or propriety.
When energy systems are built around central management, decentralisation can appear not just inefficient — but unruly.
Many of these structural concerns echo in how community energy struggles with grid access and regulation today.
Barriers That Persist
Systems resist change when they are built on control, not flexibility.
Modern community energy faces institutional frictions that echo those historical patterns. While the technologies have evolved, many of the underlying structures have not.
Some persistent barriers include:
Grid access limitations: Policies and pricing structures often discourage decentralised generation or make integration costly.
Institutional inertia: Large-scale utilities may struggle to adapt to distributed systems that reduce demand.
Unequal incentives: Subsidies and regulations often favour centralised infrastructure over community-led initiatives.
The mechanisms have changed — but the questions remain familiar: Who controls energy? Who benefits? Who decides?
Yet despite these similarities, today’s context may offer a different trajectory.
Why This Time Might Be Different
History doesn’t repeat — but it often rhymes more softly over time.
Despite these echoes, there are reasons for cautious optimism. The cultural and policy environment around energy has shifted in significant ways:
Climate urgency creates new priorities: Decentralisation supports resilience, emissions reduction, and local control — now critical goals.
Digital coordination allows local optimisation: Technologies like smart meters and networked storage reduce the risk of decentralisation.
Policy frameworks are evolving: Net metering, feed-in tariffs, and community energy grants show a growing institutional recognition.
These shifts don’t guarantee success — but they provide a footing that coal briquettes never had.
One thing has remained constant, though: innovation often begins quietly, outside the spotlight.
Moving at the Edges
Innovation often grows in overlooked places, unnoticed until it matters.
The early advocates of coal briquettes worked in obscurity. Their contributions were incremental, scattered, and often forgotten. But they reveal a pattern that continues today: real change begins not with scale, but with distributed attention.
What might this suggest for today’s community energy projects?
They succeed when connected, not centralised: Networks of local systems may prove more durable than isolated scale.
They advance through demonstration: Showing quiet, persistent results can outlast rhetorical support.
They need a memory infrastructure: Recording and learning from failures prevents repetition of the same structural mistakes.
The cellar revolution was never truly extinguished — only deferred.
If we can learn from its quiet persistence, there’s still time to support decentralised energy as a mainstream model.
Quiet Power
Some revolutions succeed by becoming unremarkable.
Decentralised energy remains politically sensitive not because it fails, but because it reorders who energy serves — and who is seen. The same was true in the age of coal balls. But today, this redistribution may be less avoidable. Climate constraints, community demands, and digital systems all point in the same direction: towards flexibility, proximity, and trust.
Quiet power doesn’t ask for permission. It makes itself useful — and waits for the world to catch up.
Conclusion
The coal briquette offered a glimpse of what decentralised energy could be — local, practical, and quietly transformative. It was too early. Too threatening to established systems. Too easy to ignore.
Community Energy Resources revisit that promise, but in a different world — one where decentralisation is no longer a threat, but increasingly a necessity.
If the cellar revolution once flickered and faded, it may now be finding its place in the light.
Sometimes what fails in one century becomes obvious in the next — not because it changed, but because we did.