The great Victorian economist, Stanley Jevons, published an exhaustive study of the coal industry in 1865. An exemplary exercise in applied economics, comprehensive in its analysis of supply and demand, geology and technology, it proved influential. William Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer, devoted much of his Budget speech to praising Jevons's achievement and implementing his recommendations.

Jevons had concluded that Britain would be unable to meet its future needs for coal. These requirements - which, at 80m tonnes per year, constituted a larger share of world energy consumption than America's today - would grow to 500m tonnes in 1911 and could, on unchanged policies, reach 2.5bn tons in 1961.