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The Hydrogen Economy: Making the Transition to the Third Industrial Revolution and a New Energy Era

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of the international best seller, The Hydrogen Economy, which has been translated into fourteen languages. It is the most widely read book in the world on the future of renewable energy and the hydrogen economy.

In his presentation on “The Hydrogen Economy,” Mr. Rifkin takes us on an eye-opening journey into the next great commercial era in history. He envisions the dawn of a new economy powered by hydrogen that will fundamentally change the nature of our market, political and social institutions, just as coal and steam power did at the beginning of the industrial age.

Rifkin observes that we are fast approaching a critical watershed for the fossil-fuel era, with potentially dire consequences for industrial civilization. Experts had been saying that we had another forty or so years of cheap available crude oil left. Now, however, some of the world’s leading petroleum geologists are suggesting that global oil production could peak and begin a steep decline much sooner, as early as the second decade of the 21st century. Non-OPEC oil producing countries are already nearing their peak production, leaving most of the remaining reserves in the politically unstable Middle East. Increasing tensions between Islam and the West are likely to further threaten our access to affordable oil. In desperation, the U.S. and other nations could turn to dirtier fossil-fuels – coal, tar sand, and heavy oil – which will only worsen global warming and imperil the earth’s already beleaguered ecosystems. Looming oil shortages make industrial life vulnerable to massive disruptions and possibly even collapse.

While the fossil-fuel era is entering its sunset century, a new energy regime is being born that has the potential to remake civilization along radical new lines, according to Rifkin. Hydrogen is the most basic and ubiquitous element in the universe. It is the stuff of the stars and of our sun and, when properly harnessed, it is the “forever fuel.” It never runs out and produces no harmful CO2 emissions.

Commercial fuel-cells powered by hydrogen are just now being introduced into the market for home, office and industrial use. Hitachi, Toshiba, and other companies will be introducing the first hydrogen fuel cell cartridges into retail stores around the world in 2007. The small hydrogen powered micro fuel cells will replace traditional batteries and provide mobile power for laptop computers, cell phones, PDA’s, Mp3 players, camcorders, portable DVD players, hand- held computers, video games, and digital cameras. With this new energy source, computers can be powered for days at a time, where existing battery technology lasts only a few hours before needing to be plugged back into the wall socket to be recharged.

Similarly, manufacturing and service-related companies are just beginning to introduce stationary fuel cell power plants to provide back-up generation during periods of peak load or when the price of electricity on the grid becomes too expensive, or when the grid can’t keep up with demand surges, resulting in rolling brownout and blackouts. Indeed, when the massive 2002 power blackout shut down large parts of the Northeast and Midwestern part of the US and the New York City skyline went black, a newly erected skyscraper in Times Square remained fully lit and powered up because a stationary fuel cell power plant had been built into its infrastructure. The German company, Linde AG, recently introduced a hydrogen fuel cell power plant at the Munich airport.

The major automobile companies are spending billions of dollars on developing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and are currently test-driving hydrogen cars, buses and trucks on roadways around the world. The first cars are expected in the show rooms for commercial sale in 2010.

The hydrogen economy makes possible a broad redistribution of power, with far-reaching beneficial consequences for society. In the new era, businesses, municipalities and homeowners could become the producers as well as the consumers of their own energy—so-called “distributed generation.” Even the automobile itself is a “power station on wheels” with a generating capacity of twenty kilowatts. Since the average car is parked most of the time, it can be plugged in, during non-use hours, to the home, office, or the main interactive electricity network, providing premium electricity back to the grid. If just 25 percent of drivers used their vehicles as power plants to sell energy back to the grid, all of the power plants in the country could be eliminated.

In order for millions of people to become producers, as well as consumers of energy, it will be necessary to redesign the power grid. That’s where the software and computer revolution converge with the new hydrogen energy regime. The same design principles and smart technologies that made possible the internet, and vast, decentralized global communication networks, will be used to reconfigure the world’s power grids so that people can begin to share energy peer-to-peer, just like they now share information, creating a new, decentralized form of energy use. The coming together of decentralized communications technology and distributed hydrogen energy technology marks the next great turning point in the way people organize the energy of the planet.

Hydrogen has the potential to end the world’s reliance on imported oil and help diffuse the dangerous geopolitical game being played out between Muslim militants and Western nations. It will dramatically cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate the effects of global warming. And because hydrogen is so plentiful and exists everywhere on earth, every human being could be “empowered,” making it the first truly democratic energy regime in history.

We are on the cusp of a third industrial revolution and a new energy era. Hydrogen is our common future.

Mr. Rifkin served as an advisor to Romano Prodi when he was president of the European Commission- the governing body of the European Union. In that capacity, he developed the initial strategic memorandum for the EU outlining the game plan for a hydrogen infrastructure across Europe. The plan he outlined was subsequently accepted by President Prodi and became the basis for a multi- billion dollar research and development initiative across the EU to wean Europe off of fossil fuel dependency, and into renewable energy and a hydrogen regime. Mr. Rifkin is now serving as the principal senior advisor to the leadership group of the European Parliament on the European Union Hydrogen Economy Initiative.

Mr. Rifkin is also currently advising Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, and Romano Prodi, the newly elected Prime Minister of Italy on energy and economic related issues. He is also an advisor to heads of state around the world.

In the U.S., Mr. Rifkin was recently asked to advise the Democratic Policy Committee of the U.S. Senate on how to develop an exit-strategy from oil and usher in a hydrogen economy for the country. Mr. Rifkin subsequently spoke at a lunch hosted for him in the U.S. Senate where he briefed all of the Democratic senators on how to address the energy crisis, global warming and the transition to renewable energies and a hydrogen based future. Mr. Rifkin will be hosted by the Department of Defense on May 22. He has been asked by the Pentagon to lecture to the heads of R&D and Officers of Acquisitions of all five branches of the military services on new technologies that can prepare the country for energy security in a post-oil era.

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Offering an Alternative Model to the American Dream

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of the international best seller, The European Dream, which has been translated into eighteen languages. The book won the prestigious Corine International Book Prize in Germany in 2005 as best economic book of the year.

Mr. Rifkin’s lecture presentation delves into the many features of the nascent European Dream. For more than two centuries the world has looked to the American Dream for inspiration and guidance. Now, a newly emerging European Dream is beginning to offer an alternative to the American vision. The European Dream represents a new chapter in world history. It is the first attempt at creating a global consciousness, befitting a globalizing economy. Mr. Rifkin will explore the political, social, and cultural aspects of the fledgling European Dream and its implications for the business community and society.

Mr. Rifkin will also explore the future economic potential of the expanded European Union, with particular emphasis on the opportunities and challenges facing both European and American companies in each other’s respective markets. The European Union is now a close economic rival to the U.S. and the world’s only other economic superpower. With its 455 million consumers, the EU is now the largest internal market in the world. It’s also the largest exporting power. And the Euro is now stronger than the dollar—a reality few American economists would have thought conceivable just four years ago. Moreover, much of Europe enjoys a longer life span and greater literacy, and has less poverty and crime, less blight and sprawl, longer vacations, and shorter commutes to work than we do in the United States. When one considers what makes a people great and what constitutes a good quality of life, observes Rifkin, the European model has much to offer the world.

Europe has become a giant laboratory for rethinking humanity’s future. In many respects, the European Dream is the mirror opposite of the American Dream. While the American Dream emphasizes economic growth and individual opportunity, the European Dream focuses more on sustainable development, and the quality of life. We Americans emphasize the work ethic. Europeans place more of a premium on balancing work and leisure. America has always seen itself as a great melting pot. Europeans, instead, prefer to preserve their rich multicultural diversity. We believe in maintaining a strong military presence in the world. Europeans, by contrast, emphasize economic cooperation and consensus over traditional geo-political approaches to foreign policy.

All of this does not suggest that Europe has suddenly become a utopia. Its problems, Rifkin cautions, are complex and its weaknesses are glaringly transparent. And, of course, Europeans’ high-mindedness is often riddled with hypocrisy. The point, however, is not whether Europeans are living up to the dream they have for themselves. We have never fully lived up to the American Dream. Rather, what’s crucial, notes Rifkin, is that Europe is articulating a bold new vision for the future of humanity that differs in many of its most fundamental aspects from America’s.

European Union based companies and industries are increasingly reaching out to the Asian market, creating close economic ties in an area of the world long dominated by U.S. commercial interests. Mr. Rifkin will examine the economic, political, and cultural implications of Europe’s new relationship to the United States and Asia and how relations between the world’s three major economic regions will likely affect the future of globalization.

Mr. Rifkin will also focus on what he believes to be an equally important consideration for both European and American businesses: to wit, the need to fully integrate the internal infrastructure of the European Union over the course of the next decade so that commerce and trade can be carried out with the same ease as in the continental United States. The key to Europe’s economic future is a successful integration of Europe’s communications, energy, and transport grid and its information technology infrastructure. The EU also has to speed the integration of a common set of regulations governing commerce and trade, as well as capital and labor flows, and ensure that English becomes lingua franca for business by the second decade of the century. The future success of the European Union will depend, in no small measure, on the integration of the European infrastructure. Mr. Rifkin will explore the ways that companies can both facilitate the integration process and benefit from its implementation.

Rifkin draws on more than twenty years of personal experience working in Europe, where he has advised heads of state and political parties, consulted with Europe’s leading companies, and helped spur grassroots environmental and social justice campaigns.

The End of Work: Rethinking Employment in the 21st Century

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of, The End of Work, the international bestseller that has been translated into sixteen languages. The book is widely credited with helping shape the current global debate on technology displacement, corporate downsizing, outsourcing, global labor mobility, and the future of jobs.

Mr. Rifkin’s presentation will focus on the vast changes taking place in the nature of employment, as the world makes the shift from mass wage labor to small, highly educated, elite workforces, working side by side with increasingly intelligent, cheap and efficient automated technologies. We are entering a new phase in history – one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs. Just as the steam engine replaced slave labor in the 19th century, the new intelligent technologies of the IT, biotech, and nanotechnology revolutions, are fast replacing mass wage labor in the 21st century. Worldwide unemployment is now at the highest level since the great depression of the 1930s. The number of people underemployed or without work is rising sharply as millions of new entrants into the workforce find themselves marginalized by an extraordinary high-technology revolution. Sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications, and other cutting-edge technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry. In the past seven years alone, 14% of all the manufacturing jobs in the world have disappeared, as more and more human labor has been replaced with intelligent, automated technology. Similar technology displacement is occurring in the white collar and service industries.

Many jobs are never coming back. Blue collar workers, secretaries, receptionists, clerical workers, sales clerks, bank tellers, telephone operators, librarians, wholesalers, and middle managers are just a few of the many occupations destined for virtual extinction. While some new jobs are being created, they are, for the most part, either highly conceptual, knowledge-based and boutique, or low paying, and generally temporary in duration. The world is fast polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces: on one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech global economy; and on the other, the growing numbers of underemployed or permanently displaced workers, who have few prospects and little hope for meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world.

We need to move beyond the delusion of retraining for a dwindling number of mass wage labor jobs, and begin to ponder the unthinkable – to prepare ourselves and our institutions for a world that is phasing out mass employment in the production and marketing of goods and services. Redefining the role of the individual in a near workerless society is likely to be the most pressing issue in the decades to come.

Fresh alternatives to formal work will need to be devised. New approaches to providing income and purchasing power will have to be implemented. Greater reliance will need to be placed on creating new employment opportunities in the emerging “third sector”, or civil society.

The end of mass wage labor could lead to unprecedented social upheaval, or signal the beginning of a great social transformation and rebirth of the human spirit.

The Age of Access: The Shift from Markets to Networks and the Rethinking of Commerce in the 21st Century

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of the international best seller, The Age of Access, which has been translated into fourteen languages. Mr. Rifkin’s lecture, “The Age of Access”, will focus on the profound changes taking place in the global economy with particular emphasis on the new economic models that are beginning to fundamentally change the way we do business.

A great change is occurring in the nature of commerce, although, as yet, it has gone largely undetected and unexamined by the media. The new information and telecommunications technologies, e-commerce and globalization are making possible a new economic era as different from market capitalism as the latter is dissimilar from mercantilism. In the new century, markets are slowly giving way to network ways of conducting business, with far reaching implications for the future of society.

There are a number of reasons for this basic restructuring of commercial life. First, the near warp speed of economic activity makes discrete market-based transactions far too slow in the coming century. In the new era, because every product is “information intensive” and being continuously upgraded, virtually everything is treated more as a service one accesses than a good one acquires. The notion of exchanging and holding on to fixed property becomes an anachronism in a society where everything is continually evolving. Second, e-commerce reduces market-based transaction costs toward zero, narrowing the traditional profit margins on sales related activity. Third, information and telecommunications technologies allow for a continuous flow of economic activity, transforming commerce from a linear sequence to a cyclical process. In short, in markets economic activity is discrete and bounded in nature while in networks economic activity is uninterrupted and perpetual. In the future, individual market transactions give way to 24/7 commodified relationships in networks in the form of memberships, subscriptions, leases, rentals, time shares, retainer agreements, and other “time-based” access arrangements.

In a linear market-based model of commerce, it is the goods that are commodified. In a process oriented network model, it is human time itself that becomes commodified. Institutions and individuals increasingly pay for the use of things over time rather than pay for the things themselves. That’s because in the old economy material resources are scarce and valuable whereas in the new economy human time is the scarce resource. The bottom line is that in an exchange economy, products are the market while in a network economy, each individual’s lifetime of experiences is the ultimate market.

In his lecture, Mr. Rifkin will discuss the many features of the emerging new economic system, including: the shift from geography to cyberspace and from national markets to global networks; the conflicts and synergies developing between the traditional intellectual property rights regime and the new open-source access models; the increasing popularity of co-sharing and gain savings agreements between former competitors, suppliers and distributors; the transition from conventional exchange of goods and services to selling human time and experiences; and the emergence of cultural production and new cultural based industries.

The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World

Mr. Rifkin is the author of The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World. The book, an international bestseller, has been translated into more than twenty one languages and is the most widely read book on biotechnology in the world.

In his presentation, Mr. Rifkin will explore, in detail, the great shift into the biotech century. After more than forty years of running on parallel tracks, the information and life sciences are beginning to fuse into a single powerful technological and economic force that is laying the foundation for the Biotech Century. The computer is increasingly being used to decipher, manage and organize the vast genetic information that is the raw resource of the new global economy. Already, transnational corporations are creating giant life-science complexes from which to fashion a bio-industrial world.

Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next few decades than in the previous 1,000 years. Food and fiber will likely be grown indoors in giant bacteria baths, partially eliminating the farmer and the soil for the first time in history. Animal and human cloning could be commonplace, with "replication" increasingly replacing "reproduction." Millions of people could obtain a detailed genetic readout of themselves, allowing them to gaze into their own biological future and predict and plan their lives in ways never before possible. Parents may choose to have their children conceived in test-tubes and gestated in artificial wombs outside the human body. Genetic changes could be made in human fetuses to correct deadly diseases and disorders and enhance mood, behavior, intelligence and physical traits.

The Biotech Century promises a cornucopia of genetically engineered plants and animals to feed a hungry world, genetically derived sources of energy and fiber to propel commerce and build a "renewable" society, wonder drugs and genetic therapies to produce healthier babies, eliminate human suffering, and extend the human life span. But, with every step we take into this "Brave New World," the nagging question, "At what cost?" will haunt us.

The new genetic commerce raises more troubling issues than any other economic revolution in history. Will the artificial creation of cloned, chimeric and transgenic animals mean the end of nature and the substitution of a "bio - industrial" world? Will the mass release of thousands of genetically engineered life forms into the environment cause catastrophic genetic pollution and irreversible damage to the biosphere? What are the consequences for the global economy and society of reducing the world's gene pool to patented intellectual property controlled exclusively by a handful of life-science corporations? What will it mean to live in a world where babies are genetically engineered and customized in the womb, and where people are increasingly identified, stereotyped, and discriminated against on the basis of their genotype? What are the risks we take in attempting to design more "perfect" human beings?

The biotech revolution will force each of us to put a mirror to our most deeply held values, making us ponder the ultimate question of the purpose and meaning of existence. This may turn out to be its most important contribution.