Well it is that time of year again, and I've just spent an hour or so sweeping the chimney and cleaning the stove. Getting ready to start heating "the old-fashioned way" is a very long way from earlier this week when I walked around the exhibition at Fabtech, the largest metal forming trade show in North America. There were robots welding, pipes bending, punches thudding, waterjets cutting and 6 kW lasers carving out samples from metal plates. It was one of those places where, if so inclined, you could watch fascinating displays almost all day (and I did). But it led me very quickly to thinking about the energy that is now consumed in manufacturing, as we have moved from getting things hand-made by the blacksmith down at the forge, to where the entire process can be robot-operated, without human touch. This change has been one of those steps that keep North America ahead in a time of global markets and much cheaper labor elsewhere. But that change, and the power of many systems today, has rarely, `til recently, had to consider the cost of energy, as a significant part of the operational expense.

That now is changing, and energy costs are already having an impact that goes outside the more obvious ones of driving less, or turning down the thermostat. Anecdotally one hears that the National Glass Center in Sunderland is closing four of its furnaces, because of the rising price of natural gas. That's one way to cope with the increase in cost, simply stop doing what you were, or at least at the same level. But as the entire economy becomes a victim, long-term that is not going to help.