Renewable vs fossil fuel: How a fossil-fuel powered industry pushed a renewable resource out of the ice market in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Few contemporaries would have asked whether the international movement of natural ice was a commodity or an energy trade. However, raising the question makes sense when it comes to understanding how and why artificially produced ice and artificial cooling forced natural ice out of most markets during the early twentieth century. While the situation was similar in most countries in which natural ice was used for cooling, Germany provides a particularly interesting example, as here it was not simply a competition between natural and artificial ice, but a contest between artificial ice, natural domestic ice and imported Norwegian natural ice, with the latter, to a certain degree, becoming a collateral victim of the rivalry between domestic natural and artificial ice. This article examines the situation in Germany in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries to explain how and why natural ice – whether domestic or imported – was superseded by artificial ice.

The main reason why substantial quantities of natural ice were traded in the nineteenth century was not the commodity itself, which was water, but its energetic qualities; in other words, its ability to cool by using up energy during the melting process. While it is true that (unless it is harvested from a glacier) natural ice is a renewable resource, it is not necessarily true that artificial ice or artificial cooling are non-renewable per se. If the energy used to power the chiller (the central piece of the cooling or artificial ice-making equipment) comes from a generation plant that uses a renewable energy source, like a hydro-power station or a solar photovoltaic plant, artificial ice and cooling can be classified as renewable. Nevertheless, as most chillers, artificial ice production units and cooling plants were directly powered either by a local steam engine, or by electricity generated in a power station burning fossil fuel, it is reasonable to assume for the purposes of this analysis that natural ice is renewable, whereas artificial ice is a non-renewable resource owing to its reliance on fossil fuel consumption.

Prior to the invention of the mechanical chiller, all marketable ice came from renewable sources. Once technological improvements had rendered artificial ice-making equipment capable of delivering substantial amounts of artificial ice and cooling that were reliant not on natural cold winter temperatures, but on the use of fossil fuels to power the equipment, natural ice was obliged to compete with artificial ice. In general terms, this point was reached when Carl Linde perfected his inventions in the late 1870s, enabling Linde AG to produce huge numbers of mechanical cooling plants. ¹

While the processes of manufacturing natural and artificial ice differed substantially, the product itself was nearly identical as far as consumers were concerned. The difference most mentioned, the potential pollution of the ice with various types of germs, was not a function of the means of production, but reflected the quality of the raw water that yielded the ice. If high-quality, unpolluted water was available, it did not matter if the ice was harvested from a pond or ice dam, and if a polluted water supply was utilised the ice would be polluted even if it had been frozen by an artificial ice-making machine. In the end, it was not the production process that made the difference, but the quality of the water prior to freezing. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, these are obvious facts as it is well known and undisputed that most micro-organisms will survive the freezing process and will become active again once the temperature reaches a certain point. In the second half of the nineteenth century, microbiology was in its infancy at best and it was by no means clear that freezing has no – or, at most, a marginal – impact on the survival of all types of bacterial pollution.

To understand how those who held stakes in the artificial ice business endeavoured to push natural ice out of the market, it should be emphasised that three – not just two – different types of ice need to be considered. On the one hand, there was artificially produced ice, which normally used water of decent quality – often drinking water, and sometimes water that had been treated prior to the freezing process to kill all kinds of germs. On the other hand, there was natural ice. This might have been harvested on lakes and ice dams with minimal or no pollution by micro-organisms, like nearly all Norwegian natural ice, or it could have been derived from moderate to heavily polluted bodies of water, like canals and ponds in German cities. The ice available in a marketplace would therefore be artificial ice, imported (Norwegian) natural ice or domestic natural ice, with consumers being unable to distinguish the different types of ice. It was particularly hard to recognise the distinction between imported Norwegian and domestic natural ice.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed not only the heyday of the European ice trade, but also a cholera pandemic in Europe, which hit the city of Hamburg very badly in the summer of 1892. As the mechanisms of transmission of the disease, the role of sanitation and the dangers of unclean drinking water were unknown, or at least not fully understood, when the first cases were reported, the disease was even exported to New York as the Hamburg authorities issued health certificates for emigrant ships bound for the US, even though the contagion was already apparent in the city. ² Thanks to the efforts of Robert Koch, and the introduction of extremely strict measures like the complete isolation of the city, the shutdown of public life, schools, the port and major employers like the shipyard of Blohm & Voss etc., the cholera outbreak was overcome in 10 weeks, after 20,000 people had contracted the disease and more than 8,000 had died. While this was a catastrophe for Hamburg, it helped to improve the public acceptance of scientific research results and, most importantly, it became known and accepted that polluted water could be the cause of various diseases.

This change in the public perception of science and the emerging academic field of microbiology meant that ice had lost its innocence and was now identified as a potential source of disease. The purity of the ice was no longer understood as the ice being crystal clear with no visible imperfections or embedded organic material, but as being sanitary and free from micro-organisms or other causes of disease. In contrast to visible imperfections or embedded materials, this type of pollution could not be identified by visual inspection. In the neighbouring port-city of Bremen, this resulted in the founding of the state bacteriological institute in 1893 with its founding director Heinrich Kurth, one of the few academic bacteriologists in Germany at this time. Kurth worked not only on improving sanitation standards in the city, but also on making sure that bodies of water could only be accepted for natural ice production if they had no critical levels of bacteria. ³ The harvesting of natural ice from certain lakes and ponds was simply banned, and all ice producers were offered the opportunity to have their lakes and ponds inspected for bacteria levels prior to the beginning of the annual ice harvest. ⁴ Unfortunately, Bremen's controls were more or less unique, and in most German cities there were no regulations concerning which bodies of water could be utilised for the production of natural ice.

This situation created an opportunity for the manufacturers of artificial ice. While consumers could not distinguish if natural ice came from a polluted or clean source, they could recognise whether or not the company delivering the ice was operating an artificial ice-production plant. Consequently, the various stakeholders in artificial ice production started to spread the message that natural ice carried the risk of bacterial pollution, while artificial ice was free from such a hazard. That this was plainly wrong – or at least a drastic oversimplification – was known to the wider scientific community and the public authorities at the Reich level. As early as 1888, the Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Department) had dealt with the issue of the quality of ice and published in its academic yearbook an article that clearly stated that the manufacturers of artificial ice could not claim their ice to be sanitary or free from germs just because it was artificial ice. ⁵ Prior to the cholera outbreak in Hamburg, virtually nobody took any notice of this clear and correct statement outside the very small group of specialists in public health and sanitation. Even within this group, the statement was not fully accepted; moreover, once the cholera had shaken Germany, nobody cared any longer about pre-pandemic knowledge.

With the number of artificial ice-making plants steadily increasing, their owners needed to increase their share of the ice markets. Accordingly, they started various campaigns to convince customers that artificial ice was superior to natural ice. In effect, they were advocating the replacement of a sustainable resource by a product manufactured using energy generated by fossil fuels. Contemporaries, however, did not consider this issue, as two other points dominated the public debate about ice consumption: costs and the hygienic quality of the ice. When it came to costs, there were not only the operational costs of running an artificial ice plant, but, more importantly, the substantial upfront investment costs of setting up such a plant. Consequently, any discussion on costs was an uphill battle for the manufacturers of artificial ice. Nevertheless, the manufacturers of artificial ice, as well as the manufacturers of artificial ice-making plants, embarked on this battle and sometimes used arguments that might have looked convincing initially, but could not withstand a more detailed critique or analysis. One of the typical arguments made in favour of artificial ice related to the procurement costs of ice during the summer months, which were for obvious reasons lower for artificial ice manufactured in the summer than for short-term orders for natural ice placed in the summer. When looking at prices from an annual perspective it becomes clear that this was a misleading argument as prices for orders of natural ice placed in the winter were regularly below the price of artificial ice. To better understand this argument, it needs to be noted that the economics of natural and artificial ice were completely different: natural ice could be harvested only during a very short period of the year and thus required advance sales and consequently production planning. If it was to be traded in the summer months, natural ice needed to be harvested and stored during the short harvest period in the winter. Actual production costs were low, but once the stockpiled ice was sold, there was no chance of additional production prior to the following winter. Artificial ice, on the contrary, did not require such advance sales and production planning as the plants could be operated all year round, but actual production costs were much higher owing to fuel costs.

It was not only the manufacturers of artificial ice-making equipment who tried to discredit natural ice, but also the authors of technical literature on the subject. Most technical handbooks on artificial cooling and ice-making included at least one allegation that natural ice was unsanitary. While it is obvious why the companies selling such equipment used such oversimplified statements as part of their advertising and marketing campaigns, it is reasonable to expect that the authors of technical treatises – often leading academics and scientists in the field – would take an objective and differentiated point of view. That these authors chose to join forces with the manufacturers of ice-making and cooling equipment can be explained by the technophilia and technological determinism that characterised Imperial Germany, by the societal emancipation movement of engineers in Germany, and simply by the fact that many, if not most, of these authors were convinced that technology was an improvement over nature. For example, Gottlieb Behrend wrote in the preface to the fourth edition on his highly successful book on artificial ice-making technology:

Im Natureis, das aus Flüssen und Bächen, sogar oft genug aus stehenden Gewässern entnommen wird, sind alle möglichen in Verderben übergegangene Stoffe eingefroren, die beim Auftauen sofort der zerstörenden Wirkung der Bakterien und Pilze wieder verfallen. (In natural ice, harvested from rivers and streams and often from standing bodies of water, are all kind of rotten materials, which after melting immediately become subject to the destructive work of bacteria and fungi.) ⁶

The main text of the book reads on the very first page: ‘Die Reinheit des künstlichen Roheises gegenüber dem Natureise schafft ihm viele Freunde […]’ (‘The purity of artificial ice compared to natural ice makes it popular […]’). ⁷ Seven years later in 1907, Georg Goettsche published a book that would become the standard textbook for artificial cooling and ice-making in Germany; it reads: ‘Das Natureis ist mehr oder weniger unrein […]’ (‘Natural ice is at least to a certain degree polluted’). ⁸

Both Behrend and Goettsche succeeded in writing textbooks on the state of the art of artificial cooling and ice-making machinery. Nevertheless, neither abstained from starting their book with a statement on natural ice that was undifferentiated, wrong or at least heavily oversimplified. The most problematic aspect was that they simply tarred all natural ice with the same brush and did not make any distinction between domestic German and imported Norwegian ice. In doing so, they became complicit with the manufacturers of artificial cooling and ice-making machines. This approach was influential and successful, as was evident in 1908 when Meyer, in his instruction book for physics and chemistry education at higher schools for girls and teacher education, wrote: ‘Das Kunsteis hat den großen Vorzug vor dem Natureis, dass es rein ist und keine Krankheitskeime birgt’ (‘The major benefit of artificial ice over natural ice is its purity and that it does not contain germs’). ⁹

With this book being no longer a technical handbook providing technical details of a certain technology to engineers, but a pedagogical book used for teacher training and as a guide for them to prepare physics and chemistry classes in grade school, it can be stated that the idea of natural ice always being contaminated by micro-organisms had become accepted societal knowledge within Germany. In a sense, it can be stated that the various groups pushing for artificial ice, and discrediting natural ice, had achieved one of their major goals with the publication of this book, as denouncing natural ice without distinguishing the various types of natural ice had now found its way into the education of girls who were the future decision-makers on purchasing ice for private households.

From the perspective of Norwegian natural ice producers and merchants, these developments were extremely bad for business, mainly because their commodity was subsumed within the broad category of ‘natural ice’ without reference to its high quality. While many of the importers of Norwegian natural ice to Germany were aware of this misrepresentation, they failed to counteract or correct it. There is no doubt that they were aware of the quality differences between their product and most of domestic German natural ice as they had regularly emphasised the Norwegian origin of their product in advertisements since at least 1877. ¹⁰ Yet this did not persuade the general public to recognise or care about this vital difference. In addition, while lauding the Norwegian origin of the ice, these advertisements failed to explain why this was important in relation to the quality of natural ice. Accordingly, German consumers learned that this ice came from abroad, but were not informed that this ice was not contaminated with the bacteria and other pollutants that afflicted domestic natural ice.

The only argument that was brought forward in favour of natural ice in comparison with artificial ice was its perceived superiority as a cooling agent. While this issue was highlighted in journals targeted at the ice industry itself, ¹¹ it lacks any scientific justification as the actual differences between the two types of ice are at best marginal and the energy required for melting the ice, or in other words its potential for cooling, does not depend on how the ice has been manufactured, but on its temperature when it is used as a cooling agent. Nevertheless, the matter was discussed with some passion by the natural ice producers, but the debate did not rise above the level of anecdotal evidence, largely because the science behind the discussion had established by 1875 that identical pieces of natural and artificial ice with the same temperature are melting under comparable conditions at the same speed and have the same cooling effect. ¹² At the same time, with regard to the argument that artificial ice was sanitary while natural ice was polluted, the misleading argument that natural ice had a higher cooling capacity than artificial ice was never addressed in the public debate and consequently remained inconsequential as natural ice gradually lost the propaganda war.

With artificial ice gaining an ever-increasing market share in Germany, the few domestic large-scale manufacturers of natural ice, like the Norddeutsche Eiswerke AG in Berlin, started investing in artificial ice-making equipment to become suppliers of both natural and artificial ice. Such companies started pushing artificial ice, largely because the equipment required to make artificial ice entailed huge upfront investment costs that needed to be recovered, whereas the initial funding for the natural ice production had long been written off. In addition, they could charge higher prices for artificial ice owing to the perceived higher quality. As a consequence, companies operating artificial and natural ice production adopted a strategy of using the artificial ice for the year-round base demand, with the natural ice mainly covering peaks in demand. Although there is no evidence to prove that such fraudulent practices took place, it would have been at least theoretically possible to mislabel some natural ice as artificial ice, as there was no way for the consumer to recognise the difference between the two types of ice.

Basically, the same logic applied to the large Bavarian breweries, which were large consumers of natural ice. By 1900, 21 Munich-based brewing companies operated 79 artificial ice and/or cooling machines, with breweries like the Hofbräuhaus opting to use only artificial ice and cooling. ¹³ As the new technology required substantial initial investment, artificial ice was used for the year-round base supplies, with natural ice only used to cover peaks in demand. The underlying logic was simple – once these machines were bought and operational, they needed to be put to work at maximum capacity to recover the outlay. While it is true that the production cost per volume of artificial ice decreased if a machine was working at its maximum capacity, it is also true that the machines still required energy generated by fuel. Considering the machine as an isolated cost/profit centre, deploying it to the maximum made sense, but this logic did not necessarily hold when there was an alternative available that required no fuel at all.

The argument that artificial ice required the use of an energy source for its production, whereas natural ice production was just based on low winter temperatures, was never articulated in its own right during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The reason for this was that notions of energy conservation, and fossil fuels being a limited resource, had not been voiced at this time. Furthermore, investing heavily in an artificial cooling/ice-making plant and then not using it was unthinkable.

While technophilia and an abstract belief in progress had fostered the deployment of artificial ice-making equipment, there were some sceptical voices. In a journal article published in 1898, the cost of the installation and operation of an artificial cooling and ice-making plant was compared with the cost of using imported Norwegian ice for the full cooling needs of a small to mid-size brewing company that could not be satisfied by domestic ice production. The author came to the conclusion that it was much cheaper for such a company to rely entirely on the use of imported Norwegian ice. ¹⁴ However, the continuing rise in the number of plants installed clearly demonstrated that this purely economic argument was no longer convincing, despite its clear conclusion. ¹⁵ The idea of becoming independent from nature and using technology to achieve this goal was so compelling that strict economic arguments were no longer persuasive.

By the outbreak of the First World War, artificial cooling and ice-making equipment had become such a reliable and standard technology that its use in private houses and apartment complexes – many of which were now supplied with electricity – was considered. ¹⁶ This had nothing to do with the cleanliness or annual cost of ice for cooling purposes, but was a matter of convenience, as the installation of such equipment would end the need to deal with heavy ice-blocks or to secure regular deliveries of ice. ¹⁷ Although the number of cooling and ice-making machines installed in private households was marginal, the prospect helps explain why and how fossil fuels transformed into electric energy could push sustainable natural ice off the markets. If it was mainly cooling that was needed and not the ice itself, the use of electricity and artificial cooling machines ended the inconvenient handling of large and heavy blocks of ice. Now cooling was available with the turn of a switch, a convenience that natural ice could not provide.

Yet what about the fisheries as another major industrial consumer of ice in Germany during the period? In contrast to ice consumption in private households, the decision processes in the fisheries were little influenced by public debate on the quality of ice and potential pollution. What mattered to the fishing companies was a reliable supply of ice for use aboard the trawlers, mainly to preserve the catch during its conveyance to port and beyond. If ice was available in sufficient volume, it did not matter to the fishing companies if it was natural or artificial, as long as the veterinarians did not reject the catch after landing owing to quality issues.

When the first German steam trawler, the PG 3 Sagitta, departed in 1885, ¹⁸ the ice required for the voyage was simply procured from easily available sources, meaning that it was either locally produced natural ice or Norwegian natural ice bought from a local ice merchant. The issue of potentially setting up an artificial ice plant for the supply of the fisheries developed only with the growth of the German trawling industry. Even when the development of a brand-new fishing port in Cuxhaven was considered shortly after 1900, it was argued that using domestic natural ice would be completely adequate and that an artificial ice plant might only be needed once the new port's ice requirements had expanded beyond the capacity of local natural ice production. ¹⁹ In other words, the only factor considered for the potential decision to replace natural by artificial ice was the availability of natural ice in volume – a purely economic factor. Decision-making processes at the other German fishing ports were comparable. In Geestemünde, the transition from natural to artificial ice took place when a new dock and auction halls were built in the area formerly occupied by ponds used for natural ice production.

Another argument for the transition from natural to artificial ice was to end the dependency on Norwegian ice imports that were required to supplement the domestic ice production ²⁰ – a decision based on economics rather than the quality of the ice. A comparable decision took place in Nordenham, which was the only German fishing port owned and operated by a single company. Here, unlike other German fishing bases, the port was originally designed to use only imported Norwegian natural ice. However, after a fire destroyed the entire installation in April 1905, ²¹ the issue of ice supplies for the company was reconsidered. With artificial ice plants now being readily available, standard technology, it was no wonder that the company opted for artificial ice supplies, particularly as the cost of an artificial ice works was marginal in the context of re-building the port completely. In essence, the transition from natural ice to artificial ice in the context of the German fishing industry prior to the First World War mainly conformed to traditional economic rationality.

Natural ice was supplanted by artificial ice in all markets except the fisheries. This was mainly a function of the popular perception that natural ice was polluted and unsanitary, whereas artificial ice was pure, hygienic and free from micro-organisms. This is wrong, or at least highly oversimplified, but it cohered with the climate of technophilia and faith in technological progress of the era. Significantly, stakeholders in artificial ice, artificial cooling and ice-making equipment effectively communicated this narrative to the public. Natural ice producers, in contrast, never managed to develop a convincing case that would fit into the zeitgeist. Thus, it can be concluded that the replacement of a sustainable resource by a fossil-fuel based resource occurred owing to the successful public relations and marketing efforts of artificial ice producers at a time when technology was equated with progress, and the concept of sustainability, with fossil fuels being finite and problematic, was largely unknown. To the consumers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it did not matter that Norwegian natural ice was produced without burning fossil fuels, and then mainly carried from southern Norway to Germany in sailing vessels that did not use fossil fuels for propulsion.

Epilogue

After the First World War natural ice was more or less completely replaced by artificial ice and cooling in Germany with the exception of some small-scale subsistence production of natural ice in East Prussia and some other parts of the country with reliable cold winter temperatures. All large-scale consumers of ice had shifted to artificially produced ice and the ice supply for the big cities was also based on artificial ice production. Nevertheless, the issue of sustainable natural ice being pushed off the market reoccurred for the last time when the German distant water trawling fleet started to use northern Norwegian ice to supply fresh fish trawlers operating off the coast of northern Norway and in the Barents Sea. Once a Tromsø-based Norwegian coal supplier for (German) trawlers operating in these areas had realised that providing natural ice instead of coal to the trawlers would allow them to reach the fishing grounds with a full load of ice and coal just as easily as if these ships had brought artificial ice from Germany and re-bunkered coal in northern Norway, many German trawler owners opted again to use natural ice, which was produced at the newly established Røsneshamn Isanlegg near Tromsø. ²² The owner of the artificial ice works in Geestemünde reacted immediately and started a campaign against the use of northern Norwegian natural ice. Some local authorities in Geestemünde became complicit in the push for the use of fossil fuel-based German artificial ice in place of Norwegian sustainable natural ice. It was only after an expedition by the Reichskuratorium für Technik in der Landwirtschaft had analysed ice production in the Tromsø region and confirmed that Norwegian natural ice did not pose a health risk, that the issue was settled. ²³ However, this was too late for the natural ice.

The outbreak of the Second World War ended this use of northern Norwegian natural ice aboard German trawlers as an alternative to fossil fuel-based artificial ice manufactured in German ports. After the war a whole range of technological improvements, including oil-burning engines for the trawlers with their increased operational range for the ships and the beginning of deep-freezing technology aboard the trawlers prohibited a revival or continuation of the use of northern Norwegian natural ice as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuel-based artificial ice. Artificial ice production, based on energy generated by burning fossil fuels, had finally pushed natural ice, its sustainable competitor, off the market. The era in which natural ice was deployed in a commercial context was finally over.