Leading the Way to a Third Industrial Revolution

Before our discussion of the four pillars and how to can create more energy, we must first assess current energy usage. Today, much of the dialogue around energy policy focuses on sources of energy generation. Coal, renewables, nuclear; in short, how to get more power.

But maybe we need something other than more power. Maybe we need smarter power. We need to first use the energy that we have. After all, before buying a new car, you might want to check the oil filter.

To give an idea for the potential for energy efficiency, the IEA estimates that energy efficiency could reduce 8,200 Megatons of CO2 emissions by 2030 (this is the amount of CO2 produced by 10 million cars over 200 years!). Some experts estimate that something as simple as replacing old lighting fixtures could reduce energy consumption in homes by 80%.

This is not to say that energy efficiency will completely solve our problems. We still rely on fossil fuels to run our economy, our grid is antiquated and built mostly in the 1960’s, and we don’t completely understand the effects that an intermittent power supply might have on the ability to draw power at our leisure.

It seems that we are entering a new era of consciousness. For so long, our world has been using resources as if they were limitless. In the past, what we wanted, we bought. If we couldn’t afford it, we got a loan. As loans increased in frequency and size, debt mounted and very few people thought about the outcome of such a system. Then we learned the same lesson that every nine-year-old learns after spending all of her allowance, “money doesn’t grow on trees,” and our economy collapsed.

Now people are looking for any and all possible ways to cut costs. We want to save more and spend less. Dollar stores are opening new outlets and expanding their product lines. WalMart has cleverly repositioned itself from “Always low Prices” to “Save money. Live better.” It seems that the world is slowly beginning to understand that resources are finite.

The same realization must take place with energy. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t take an energy meltdown to make us aware of this. In the next few blog posts, we will begin the discussion on this often overlooked critical foundation to energy… efficiency.

More monumental than producing and sharing information in new ways is the shift in the structure of delivery. Allow me to explain. The old model is from one to many: one power plant providing energy to many people, few monks writing books for all others to read. This is top-down, centralized information delivery.

In communication, the evolution from very few people transcribing books to the printing press enabled mass literacy. More people with access to more information completely changed the economic system in place. This happened again during the Second Industrial Revolution as more people gained access to more information through sources like the television and radio.

This all changed with the internet revolution. No longer are we concerned with serving more people the information produced by a relatively small number of sources. The internet allows many people (such as myself) to produce information (like this blog) and share it with others (like you- if you have made it this far). Distributed models can serve more people than centralized ones. Can you imagine how slow the internet would be if we were accessing information that was stored on one “super computer?”

How we deliver energy has not yet caught up with this shift in thinking. Most are still talking about solving our energy needs by building more centralized generators. But these old systems of energy delivery don’t coincide with our new ways of thinking.

The Third Industrial Revolution vision does this. With the technology available today, we can create an “energy internet.” In the not so distant future we will be able to produce our own energy and share it with others. “How?” you might ask? Stay tuned. This will be the focus of the next few posts.

“We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.” (Gerda Lerner)

As we are currently (hopefully) on the back end of the worst global economic slump since the great depression, it seems that we are searching for anything that will jumpstart our economy. But perhaps we should begin by looking backward instead of forward.

Throughout history, the great economic revolutions happen when we change how we organize two things: energy and communication. When we reorganize the way that we use energy and the way that we distribute information, it causes large scale economic reverberations.

Take for instance, the first hydraulic civilizations. Through the use of organized writing, people – like the Mesopotamians and Egyptians – were able to more effectively manage and store grain. Stored grain means surplus energy, which means an expansion of population, a growing labor force, and thus, what became known as the agricultural revolution.

The first major reorganization since this beginning of civilization took place when coal-powered steam technology was combined with the printing press. The amount of available energy, combined with the amount of available information, sparked a great economic shift, and the First Industrial Revolution.

In the late 19th century and first two thirds of the 20th century, electric communication-telephone, radio, television- came together with oil and the internal combustion engine. This ease of communication, combined with better ways to transport goods (and people), caused what we now know as the Second Industrial Revolution.

But today, as I currently demonstrate with this blog, we communicate in completely new ways; and perhaps more importantly, we can create, store, and share energy in ways that we never thought imaginable.

Welcome to our Third Industrial Revolution Blog.  This blog is a place for discussion where we will keep you up to date on developments in the four pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution, the activities of the Office of Jeremy Rifkin, and many other related subjects.  We are constantly trying to find better ways to stay in touch with those truly concerned with addressing our intertwined economic, energy, and climate crises.  We hope that you will continue to check back for updates, add to the conversation, and tell your friends.  So without further delay… welcome.