The Third Industrial Revolution

The Democratization of Energy. Lateral Power

An Overview Presented By: Francie Finn Kn Grid kngrid.com

When new energy and new communication revolutions converge it changes the whole way we live

We have been living under two industrial revolutions, the first in the 19th century, the second in the 20th century.

In the 19th century, print technology became very cheap, we introduced public schools and we created a mass workforce with the literacy skills to organize the complexities of a coal and steam-powered revolution. 

In the 20th century, telephone, radio and television became the communication medium to organize a very complex auto, oil and suburban age

In the 21st Century an economic crisis occurred … 

The real economic crisis occurred in July 2008 when oil hit $147 a barrel…prices dramatically increased on all products made from/or transferred by fossil fuels (pesticides, fertilizers, construction materials, pharmaceutical products, synthetic fiber, power, transport, heat and light).

Prices skyrocketed and the whole engine of the global economy shut down. That was the economic earthquake. The collapse of the financial market sixty days later was the aftershock

The outer limits of how far we can globalize this economy ‘s fossil fuels is about  $150 a barrel.  Peak oil per capita occurred in 1979.  If we had distributed all the crude oil at that point to everyone on earth, that would be the maximum each would have. 

We found more oil since, but the population rose quicker. So if we distributed all the oil we have to 7 billion people, there's simply less to go around.

In the 1990’s China and India became a third of the human race and the demand pressure on crude oil became overwhelming bottoming out at 150 a barrel. After the crisis in 2008, the economy stopped and oil went down to $30 a barrel due to less economic activity

In 2010, we started to replenish inventory around the world. We started to grow again. We turned the spending engine on and oil shot up from $30 to $100 a barrel

Today, crude oil is at $101, and what's happening?

Once again, all the prices are going up, purchasing power is plummeting and the engine is shutting off again.

So here's the message: Every time we try to regrow the economy at the same rate we were growing before July 2008, we will see this terrible attempt to rejuvenate it, and within three-year cycles oil prices go up, all other prices go up, purchasing power goes down, we collapse.

So we're in a very dangerous period over the next 30 years of growth and collapse. We need to address this and move to a new energy regime and new economic paradigm

The internet is distributed and collaborative in nature, and the power is lateral. What we're beginning to see is the emerging of this very powerful communication medium, the internet, with new energy systems…renewable energies

So when distributed Internet communication starts to organize distributed energies, we have a very powerful Third Industrial Revolution that could change everything.

Here are the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution:

Pillar One:

Renewable Energy Mandates and Incentives

i.e. 33% Renewable by 2020 

Answer:  Feed in Tariff, which means the owner get’s  a premium -- if they convert their facility to renewable energy, and want to sell  energy back to the grid, they  get a higher price than the normal energy. Therefore the system is paid for over time. 

Pillar Two:

How do we collect these distributed renewable energies?

Pillar Two leads us to buildings, the number one user of energy in the world and the number one cause of climate change.  If we convert buildings to power plants producing their own energy over the next 30 years it will create millions of jobs and thousands of new enterprises.  

The goal is to convert every single office, home, and factory into it’s own micro power plant over the next 30 years so that it collects the sun on the roof, the wind off the side walls, the heat under the ground, et cetera.

Number Three is Storage

Pillar Three: Storage. The sun isn't always shining and the wind isn't always blowing when you need electricity. These are intermittent energies, so we need to store it as hydrogen to be converted as energy.

Pillar Four : The internet communication revolution completely merges with new distributing energies to create a nervous system, an infrastructure for a new economic paradigm

The use of internet technology can convert the transmissions lines into an energy internet that acts just like the internet. So when millions and millions of buildings are collecting their own green energy on site, storing it as hydrogen, excess energy can be detected by a software system that can connect and share it across entire continents. Just like we now produce our own information, store it in digital and share it online.

Pillar Five is Electric Plug-in Transport

The electric vehicles and fuel cell hydrogen vehicles are on the market and will be in mass production by Daimler, General Motors and the other car companies in 2014. Vehicles will be able to plug in anywhere on the grid and get green electricity and sell energy back to the grid when the price is right.

These Five Pillars together are a new technology platform, the infrastructure that we need. The key is not to mend the old 20th Century infrastructure but to create a new infrastructure for a 21st Century Third Industrial Revolution.

The renewable energy , construction, real estate IT, logistics and transport industries will all benefit from laying down this new infrastructure creating thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs.

As soon as a each city in each state commits to this revolution and  create public private partnerships the jobs start right away at day one. The new economic paradigm

The utility companies will run the energy internets and set-up relationships with thousands of corporate clients and homeowners to manage their energy flows to keep their energy costs down and their productivity up just as IBM went from selling computers to selling consulting services.  

The key to survival in the next 30 years is not labor costs, it's energy costs to the extent that any business can keep its energy costs low, its productivity and margins high to survive. 

The utility companies can share those savings with their clients.

Utilities Future

There is a generational problem, the old thinks centralize and top down.

The young generation in thinks distributive, collaborative and lateral.

The music companies didn't understand distributed file sharing of music and the newspapers didn't understand the distributed power of the blogosphere and both tumbled.

When the internet connects with energies and we create a democratization of energy it will be one hundred times more powerful than the internet as we begin to create new business models and new ways of relating to each other.