A great article in the current issue of Ode magazine features an excerpt from "Third Industrial Revolution:  An Insider's Look at the New Energy Innovation That's Transforming the World" by Jeremy Rifkin titled "Viva la revolution".  Rifkin began to search for a new economic paradigm that would sustain a post-carbon era when he began to realize that the great economic revolutions occur when new communication systems merge with new energy systems.  His vision of the "Third Industrial Revolution" will inaugurate an era with collaborative behavior and networked together like our current Internet.  Energy will be created and consumed at local nodes and can be then shared via the Smart Grid.

The following 5 pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution:

1. Shift to renewable energy
2. Transform the building stock of every continent into micro-power plants to collect renewable energies on site
3. Deploy hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies
4. Use Internet technology to transform the power grid oif every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet.  When millions of buildings are generating small amounts of energy locally, they can sell the surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their neighbors
5. Transition the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart continental interactive grid.

The Third Industrial Revolution will have hundreds of millions of people generating green energy in their homes, offices, and factories and sharing via intelligent distributed electricity networks.  Just like we share music, news, and other activities online now, our energy will have a similar model.

Our goal should be to find the capital for transitioning the world to the next industrial revolution!  I think I will put this book on my reading list.