The Next Industrial Revolution
“This is no Utopia, no futuristic vision: in twenty-five years’ time, we will be able to construct each building as its own ‘mini power station’ producing clean and renewable energy for its own needs, with the surplus being made available for other purposes. These are the pillars by author Jeremy Rifkin of his book ‘Third Industrial Revolution,’ which he has described so powerfully: greater use of renewable energies, the construction of buildings which produce their own energy, and the transition to the use of hydrogen for energy storage. What is at stake is the future of the European Union—and we should not be so complacent as to understand the word ‘future’ as meaning only something which comes after us! We must not miss the opportunity to usher in the Third Industrial Revolution: it offers us a chance to put the European economy on a forward-looking and sustainable footing and, in that way, to secure its competitiveness in the long term.” —Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament
We are in the midst of an economic revolution. The centrally organized and elite primary energy of the current industrial revolution relies on oil for its economic production and gas-guzzling cars and trucks as its primary transportation method. The benefit of this energy is limited to a few nations and is an elite form of power. The past several decades the world has been consuming three and a half barrels of oil for every new barrel we find. The current global economic energy model is unsustainable with the finite resources it relies on. What we are seeing is a great transformation from the current hierarchical power to the distributed and collaborative lateral power of the next industrial revolution. This reality is what determines our present condition and our future socioeconomic growth prospects. The current industrial revolution's economic model has peaked and we are now moving from an oil-centric model to a renewable and sustainable energy model.
One critical reference source which supports this paradigm shift and informs our business model is Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Third Industrial Revolution, which outlines very clearly historical economic shifts and the important role the housing industry can help with the new economic revolution today. Mr. Rifkin’s New York Times bestselling book provided the blueprint for the economic transition to a post-carbon ecological society across the European Union. According to The European Energy Review, "perhaps no other author or thinker has had more influence on the EU's ambitious climate and energy policy than the famous American 'visionary' Jeremy Rifkin." In the words of Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, Jeremy Rifkin "is the economic and ecological worldwide ambassador of the energy transition… Rifkin presents a grand scenario for the future: a visionary approach unlike anyone has dared to put forward in the last fifty years that will boost our thinking and help with our orientation.”
In the book, he cites that we’ve hit “peak globalization” in how far we can actually further grow the economy based on elite fossil fuels and the current energy grid. Rising oil prices, limited supply of the precious and finite oil and gas reserves which dominated the second industrial revolution and the huge negative impact the byproducts are having on our earth and climate with global warming and rising sea level temperatures makes the transition to the new economic models imperative as we transition towards the future.
How can we transition the affordable housing model to match the economic transitions occurring? Eco-Thresholds has adopted what Rifkin refers to as the "Five Pillars".
We have adopted these guiding principles to our housing development model and we’ve begun the process of making the change from a carbon-based fossil fuel energy regime to a renewable energy regime. When these five pillars come together, they make up "an indivisible technological platform—an emergent system whose properties and functions are qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the synergies between the pillars create a new economic paradigm that can transform the world". The 5 pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution:
(1) shifting to renewable energy;
(2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro–power plants to collect renewable energies on site;
(3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies;
(4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbors); and
(5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.
The construction industry and the real estate sector must collaborate with renewable energy companies to convert buildings into mini power plants to collect green energies on site to power the buildings. When the energy production on site matches or exceeds the energy usage, the net effect is zero energy consumption. By reconfiguring the buildings we build, we are transforming our affordable rental buildings into a mini power plant that can collect renewable energies on site.
By installing on-site hydrogen and electric storage technology in every building, and across our entire collection of developed properties and hopefully will interconnect along with our partners buildings in communities which will store intermittent renewable energy we will ensure a continuous locally produced reliable supply of green electricity to meet community demand. This will allow low income residents to unshackle themselves from the energy power they currently rely on whose prices will continue to rise as non-renewable energy supplies are depleted. By installing on-site energy storage stations where community residents and/or the tenants of the homes can buy and sell electricity on the distributed electricity grid.
Using Internet communication technology to convert the electricity grid into an intelligent utility ‘smart grid’ network so that millions of people can send green electricity generated locally back to the grid to share with others in an open-source commons. The smart grid is the backbone of the new economy.
Just as the Internet created thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs, so too will the intelligent electricity network—except “this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than the Internet,” says Marie Hattar, vice president of marketing in Cisco’s network systems solutions group.
Transitioning our own modular housing transportation fleet to include electric plug-in and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles powered by renewable energies generated at hundreds or thousands of our affordable building sites will establish our company as a leader in renewable powered transportation equipment.
If the First Industrial Revolution gave rise to dense urban cores, tenements, row housing, skyscrapers, and multilevel factories, and the Second Industrial Revolution spawned flat suburban tracts and industrial parks, the Third Industrial Revolution transforms every existing building into a dual-purpose dwelling—a habitat and a micro–power plant.
Another threshold in combining each of these five ‘thresholds’ we must combine and which must lead the affordable housing revolution Eco-Thresholds will lead.
Twenty-five years from now, millions of buildings—homes, offices, shopping malls, industrial and technology parks—will have been converted or constructed to serve as both power plants and habitats. The wholesale reconversion of each nation’s commercial and residential building stock into mini power plants over the next three decades will touch off a building boom—creating thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs—with an economic multiplier effect that will impact every other industry.
One critical reference source which supports this paradigm shift and informs our business model is Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Third Industrial Revolution, which outlines very clearly historical economic shifts and the important role the housing industry can help with the new economic revolution today. Mr. Rifkin’s New York Times bestselling book provided the blueprint for the economic transition to a post-carbon ecological society across the European Union. According to The European Energy Review, "perhaps no other author or thinker has had more influence on the EU's ambitious climate and energy policy than the famous American 'visionary' Jeremy Rifkin." In the words of Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, Jeremy Rifkin "is the economic and ecological worldwide ambassador of the energy transition… Rifkin presents a grand scenario for the future: a visionary approach unlike anyone has dared to put forward in the last fifty years that will boost our thinking and help with our orientation.”
In the book, he cites that we’ve hit “peak globalization” in how far we can actually further grow the economy based on elite fossil fuels and the current energy grid. Rising oil prices, limited supply of the precious and finite oil and gas reserves which dominated the second industrial revolution and the huge negative impact the byproducts are having on our earth and climate with global warming and rising sea level temperatures makes the transition to the new economic models imperative as we transition towards the future.
How can we transition the affordable housing model to match the economic transitions occurring? Eco-Thresholds has adopted what Rifkin refers to as the "Five Pillars".
We have adopted these guiding principles to our housing development model and we’ve begun the process of making the change from a carbon-based fossil fuel energy regime to a renewable energy regime. When these five pillars come together, they make up "an indivisible technological platform—an emergent system whose properties and functions are qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the synergies between the pillars create a new economic paradigm that can transform the world". The 5 pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution:
(1) shifting to renewable energy;
(2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro–power plants to collect renewable energies on site;
(3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies;
(4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbors); and
(5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.
The construction industry and the real estate sector must collaborate with renewable energy companies to convert buildings into mini power plants to collect green energies on site to power the buildings. When the energy production on site matches or exceeds the energy usage, the net effect is zero energy consumption. By reconfiguring the buildings we build, we are transforming our affordable rental buildings into a mini power plant that can collect renewable energies on site.
By installing on-site hydrogen and electric storage technology in every building, and across our entire collection of developed properties and hopefully will interconnect along with our partners buildings in communities which will store intermittent renewable energy we will ensure a continuous locally produced reliable supply of green electricity to meet community demand. This will allow low income residents to unshackle themselves from the energy power they currently rely on whose prices will continue to rise as non-renewable energy supplies are depleted. By installing on-site energy storage stations where community residents and/or the tenants of the homes can buy and sell electricity on the distributed electricity grid.
Using Internet communication technology to convert the electricity grid into an intelligent utility ‘smart grid’ network so that millions of people can send green electricity generated locally back to the grid to share with others in an open-source commons. The smart grid is the backbone of the new economy.
Just as the Internet created thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs, so too will the intelligent electricity network—except “this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than the Internet,” says Marie Hattar, vice president of marketing in Cisco’s network systems solutions group.
Transitioning our own modular housing transportation fleet to include electric plug-in and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles powered by renewable energies generated at hundreds or thousands of our affordable building sites will establish our company as a leader in renewable powered transportation equipment.
If the First Industrial Revolution gave rise to dense urban cores, tenements, row housing, skyscrapers, and multilevel factories, and the Second Industrial Revolution spawned flat suburban tracts and industrial parks, the Third Industrial Revolution transforms every existing building into a dual-purpose dwelling—a habitat and a micro–power plant.
Another threshold in combining each of these five ‘thresholds’ we must combine and which must lead the affordable housing revolution Eco-Thresholds will lead.
Twenty-five years from now, millions of buildings—homes, offices, shopping malls, industrial and technology parks—will have been converted or constructed to serve as both power plants and habitats. The wholesale reconversion of each nation’s commercial and residential building stock into mini power plants over the next three decades will touch off a building boom—creating thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs—with an economic multiplier effect that will impact every other industry.
“The old ways of creating wealth just don’t work anymore, and politicians the world over are struggling to cope with the convergence of financial meltdown, huge debt, rising commodity and energy prices, accelerating climate change, and food and water shortages. The Third Industrial Revolution presents us with a breathtakingly exciting alternative that will create the jobs, the profits, and the technological breakthroughs we now so urgently need.” —Jonathon Porritt, founder and director of Forum for the Future.