The priority task of the European Union in the first half of the 21st century, according to Jeremy Rifkin, “should be leadership in the third industrial revolution.” Reducing carbon emissions is just part of the problem: now is the time to transition to a low-carbon economy.
This is not a utopia, there is nothing futuristic here: in a quarter of a century, every home will be a “mini-power plant”, providing clean energy to domestic needs and giving its excess to others.
The Third Industrial Revolution has three fundamental sources, three pillars that Jeremy Rifkin describes so vividly and convincingly: the widespread use of renewable energy sources, the construction of buildings that generate their own energy, and the transition to the use of hydrogen as an energy storage device.
The future of the European Union is at stake, and “the future” cannot be thought of as what comes after us!
We cannot miss this opportunity: the third industrial revolution is a chance to put the European economy on a forward-looking and sustainable footing and thus ensure its long-term competitiveness.
Hans Geert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, speech at the second EU Citizens' Agora Forum, 12 June 2008.
Acknowledgments
First of all, I must thank Nicholas Easley, head of global operations, for his careful oversight of the overall vision of the Third Industrial Revolution and for his editorial contributions to the creation of the book. I am grateful to Andrew Linose, Director of Programs, for his strict management of our day-to-day work and for his valuable editorial comments. I also thank our interns Flora de Slover, Alma Velasquez, Valbona Tika, Lauren Bush, Bart Provoust, Divia Susarla, Bobby Samuel, Brian Bauer, Petros Kusma, and Sean Moorhead for their expert assistance in preparing the manuscript.
I am very grateful to editor Emily Carlton for her enthusiasm and dedication to this project, as well as her many suggestions for the design of the book. Thanks also to my agent Larry Kirschbaum for ideas on the initial book proposal and its positioning in the global marketplace.
A special thanks goes to Angelo Consoli, who has led our European operations for the past nine years. His political acumen and selfless dedication helped greatly in turning the vision presented in the "Third Industrial Revolution" into reality across Europe.
Finally, I just need to thank my wife, Carol Gruenewald, for her advice and patience over the past 22 years. Our shared dream of creating a more sustainable world for everyone has inspired us throughout this time.
Introduction
Washington, DC
Our industrial civilization stands at a crossroads. Oil and other fossil energy sources that form its basis have exhausted themselves, and the technologies they generated are becoming a thing of the past. The industrial infrastructure built on fossil fuels is aging and needs to be updated. As a result, unemployment is rising around the world. Governments, companies and consumers are mired in debt and living standards are falling. A billion people, almost a seventh of the world's population, suffer from malnutrition and hunger.
In addition, climate change is already looming on the horizon due to fossil fuel industries. Scientists warn that we are facing a catastrophic change in the temperature and chemistry of the planet, threatening to destabilize ecosystems around the world. They do not rule out a mass extinction of plants and animals at the end of the century, which will call into question the survival of humans as a species. The need for a new economic vision that can give us a fairer and more sustainable future is becoming increasingly clear.
By the 1980s Evidence has begun to accumulate indicating that the fossil fuel-based industrial revolution has reached its peak and that human-caused climate change is leading to a planetary crisis of unprecedented proportions. For the past 30 years, I have been searching for a new paradigm that could usher in the post-carbon era. As a result of this research, I realized that the great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication technologies merge with new energy systems. New energy regimes enable more interconnected economic activity, enhance commercial exchanges, and promote closer and more inclusive social relationships. The accompanying communication revolutions provide the means to organize and manage new space-time dynamics driven by new energy systems.
In the mid-1990s. It has become clear that a new convergence point for communications and energy technologies is just around the corner. Internet technologies and renewable energy are poised to converge and form a powerful new infrastructure for the third industrial revolution that will change the world. In the coming era, hundreds of millions of people will generate their own green energy in their homes, offices and factories and share it through the “energy Internet” in the same way that we now create and share information on the Web. The democratization of energy will lead to a fundamental restructuring of human relationships, changing the very nature of business, social governance, education and participation in civil society.
My vision for the Third Industrial Revolution was first introduced to an executive development course at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, where I have been a senior lecturer in emerging trends in science, technology, economics and society for the past 16 years. During the five-week course, CEOs and senior managers from around the world tackle the challenges they face in the 21st century. My idea quickly penetrated corporate headquarters and became part of the political lexicon of the heads of state of the European Union.
By 2000, the European Union was already pursuing aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to an era of environmentally sustainable economies. In Europe, they were preparing targets and benchmarks, revising priorities scientific research and developments, introduced codes, rules and standards for the new economic process. In contrast, America was preoccupied with gadgets and “disruptors” from Silicon Valley, and American homeowners were blind to the fantastic real estate market growth fueled by subprime mortgages.
The concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0)
Propaganda myth or “sign of trouble”
The “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” 4IR for short, is positioned as the massive introduction of robotization and digital control technologies, which will reduce industry’s dependence on labor costs and give an additional impetus to the localization of the real sector. In fact, 4PR is the globalization and universalization of the principles of “distributed” production and access to finance. No more, but no less. And there is nothing fundamentally new in this approach: its key elements were tested back in the 1980s at both the production and management levels.
- There is no new energy platform. We are using roughly the same energy platforms as we were 30 years ago, and the much-hyped “alternative” energy sources are actually the most archaic (besides the question of their cost-effectiveness).
- There is no new transport platform. The technologies used are mostly from the 1980s, even in the field of space exploration. Despite changes in the social accessibility of certain types of transport (primarily high-speed), there has been no strategic breakthrough. Reducing logistics costs is achieved mainly through organizational measures.
- There was no mass introduction of fundamentally new materials. There is progress in the field of new materials and the creation of new properties for old materials, but nothing globally revolutionary is happening in practice.
- There are no revolutionary changes in the field of energy efficiency in production. Although there are some, we emphasize, evolutionary shifts in reducing the energy intensity of social life, which, however, are not always adequate from a cost-effectiveness point of view.
Let's consider the principles of one of the key economic innovations of the 1980-90s - the Toyota Production System. If we put aside the ideological and motivational part (“kaizen”), they mainly affect the service, logistics and management components of the production process. The principles of Toyota, in essence, are managerial post-industrialism, i.e. management not so much of resources as of time and space, key components of the post-industrial world. This approach is absolutely consistent with the ideas of 4PR.
From a strategic point of view, the cumulative effect of the changes in the 1980s was greater. But they were not considered capable of changing the essence of economic relations. And the totality of these changes was not considered as a globally catastrophic event that could bury the entire previous economic order. There are only prerequisites for restructuring some, but not all, aspects of the functioning of the real sector of the world economy. Which will inevitably have serious social consequences. But this in itself is not a revolution.
From the point of view of strategic effect, the development of the “digital economy” and 4PR are not so much complementary as mutually competing models for the further development of the global economy. Especially from the point of view of withdrawal points and models of redistribution of “investment rent”. In the “digital economy”, the key type of “production” is the ability to generate “rent” from investment “air”. In 4PR, the source of investment rent remains very real resources and production.
In fact, there is no real technological – or even economic – basis for 4PR specifically as a “revolution in industry”. There are currently only two aspects on the global “agenda” that can be considered truly “revolutionary”: new global logistics and new technologies of global finance.
But until the moment when the new logistics (the new Trans-American Canal, the Great Silk Road, the North-South transport corridor, the pipeline system bypassing economic limitrophes, the Trans-African Transport Corridor) begins to play a truly global role, another 5 years must pass. 7 years. Naturally, provided that opposition to these projects does not go into an openly violent phase. In the meantime, “new logistics” remains only a political and informational factor.
The only element of 4PR, which in practice has a “revolutionary” significance, is the issue of a radical restructuring of financial communications and financial and investment relations in modern economy.
However, the main question arises: what is the focal object of investment processes during the 4PR? Of course, at the initial stage, large investment resources will be required to technologically upgrade existing assets and to resolve the inevitable social issues that arise in this regard. And the first 5 years of the “revolution” can be quite favorable for investment, although socially extremely dangerous - and, probably, fraught with serious costs in developed countries of the industrial world, where relatively high level life and preservation of the industrial structure of society.
Industrialized countries make up a significant part not only of the developing world, but also of the European Union, starting with Germany, where the structure of the economy corresponds to the industrial model even more than in Russia, and ending with Italy. Not to mention Poland or Spain. Instead of a division between the “northern” and “southern” flanks of the EU, a divide arises according to the industrial/post-industrial criterion. And it may turn out to be much sharper politically and socially.
At a temporary “lag” of 5-7 years, and in historically This is an extremely near prospect; there is a risk of the formation of a “bubble”, in which even the resources “extracted” from financial speculation will not be able to find economically justified assets for investment. After all, one of the most important positive circumstances of 4PR is a fast and relatively comfortable system in economic and managerial terms, which allows for rapid operational changeover. The task of periodic complete renewal of fixed assets, the most capital-intensive element of the modern real sector, is eliminated.
That is why the key component of 4PR is not modernization as such, but the geographical cascading of technological processes, as well as the scaling of production depending on the size and dynamics of markets. And this, by the way, will be a big challenge for the post-Soviet space.
But then the system for calculating competitiveness, characteristic of both industrial and post-industrial capitalism, is no longer relevant. The basis becomes not efficiency, elevated within the framework of financial and investment capitalism to the rank of the highest value, but adaptability, the ability to quickly adapt to changing markets both qualitatively and quantitatively, accessible from the point of view of economically feasible logistics. And this is a completely different picture, not only from the point of view global issues associated with the redistribution of technological and logistics rent, but also practical planning investments.
The question arises: where should the investment flow be directed? “To a first approximation” the following directions are seen as such:
- Geographic mobility of assets. Compact, unmanned enterprises outside recognized and secured industrial centers. A sharp reduction in logistics requirements. Transition to “Lego assembly”. In this case, the main investment focus becomes engineering and adaptation of production to the needs of regions or macro-regions (glocalization).
- Basic technological solutions. Key technological rent will arise and be collected precisely at the level of basic technologies, as well as the development and production of key components, the contribution of which to the total cost of production may be small.
- Human capital. Organization of social-production (and not just production) space around assets and social-supporting and trade infrastructure 4PR. But the scale of this potential “sphere of investment” is unlikely to be too large - it will be necessary to equip the sales infrastructure rather than the production infrastructure.
The proclaimed industrial revolution is almost a return to artisanal, adaptive, customized production, but - and this is very important - with the removal of restrictions on access to investment resources and with a sharp increase in the “connectedness” of technological and operational processes, which is achieved through the widespread use of blockchain technologies » in addition to the financial sector. The “factory-industrial” model is losing its advantage of scale, which was one of the key ones already in the first half of the 2000s.
Even a superficial consideration of the issue of 4PR leads us to the conclusion: it is definitely not a matter of industry, but, first of all, a matter of financial and logistics support. And also the possibility of the final separation of the management team from the assets.
If we use the Soviet paradigm, then from the constant triad “director-party organizer-chief engineer”, those in demand within new system What remains, oddly enough, is the “party organizer,” whose function will be to ensure social stability in production. The “director” (not in the sense of position, but in the sense of function) can become an equally “remote” figure. Such as the “shareholder” is now. And the “chief engineer” can be partially automated (diagnostics), and partially transferred to outsourcing (change of engineering solution).
And the very concept of “property” in the new economy becomes, at a minimum, “mosaic”. But if property is “mosaic,” then to what extent can we talk about preserving the traditional approach to investment? How possible is it in principle to invest in property, the real beneficiary, which exists only in a “dispersed form” in the blockchain network? Is it possible to invest resources that are liquid outside of virtual finance into such property?
It is also important that formed in last years In the global economy, “investment cycles” were burdened with a gigantic volume of investment derivatives and surrogates. Economic priorities with distorted market motivation began to play an excessive role. For example, stimulating investment in countries with high unemployment and cheap labor. Classic examples: Bangladesh, African countries, Pakistan, India. But it’s worth remembering the industrial part Latin America, a number of Asia-Pacific countries classified as “industrial tigers”.We state: in conditions of excessive “humanitarianization of investment priorities”, it is extremely difficult to implement the principles of 4PR. In order to successfully at least begin the “fourth industrial revolution,” at least in the systemically defective form as it is currently interpreted, it will be necessary to dehumanize the investment and then the operational space. Simply put, the 4PR operating space must become “socially irresponsible.”
But then the ideal space for a “revolution” becomes an “investment wasteland”, where there is no depressing social and humanitarian burden.
For 4PR, it will be necessary to “clear” the space of previously established socio-economic obligations and reset the investment cycles formed in the last 25-30 years. Starting with the transfer of relations between the “conditional West” and China into exclusively economic competitive interaction. “China” is also a conditional concept in which the PRC acts as the dominant center of a wider industrial space. West-China relations constitute the key “investment cycle” in the modern economy, which has become too economically “cumbersome”, accumulating various “political burdens”. But it is impossible to “reset” this cycle without global consequences.
Hence the question: isn’t the imposition of the idea of the proximity and inevitability of a new industrial revolution part of the preparation for a global investment default? And this is precisely what is hidden under the flowery term “revolution”. After all, only after this default, after the inevitable (albeit temporary) regionalization of global finance, will it be possible to assess the consequences and prospects of the new situation not from the point of view of the slogans of 4PR, which are attractive in themselves, but from the point of view of their real socio-economic content.
The emerging third industrial revolution, unlike the previous two, is built on the basis of distributed renewable energy sources that are everywhere and mostly free - solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, geothermal energy, biomass energy, ocean wave and tidal energy.
This scattered energy will be collected in millions of locations and then pooled and shared through smart energy grids to provide optimal energy levels and support a highly efficient, sustainable economy.
The distributed nature of renewable energy requires collaboration rather than a hierarchical command system.
This new horizontal energy regime sets the organizational model for the countless economic activities that flow from it. And the distributed and collaborative industrial revolution, in turn, inevitably leads to greater use of the wealth created.
The partial transition from markets to networks gives business a different orientation. Antagonistic relationships between sellers and buyers are replaced by cooperation between suppliers and users. Personal gain is being replaced by common interest. The desire to keep information proprietary is being replaced by an emphasis on openness and shared trust. The emphasis on transparency over secrecy is based on the premise that creating value online does not devalue individual contributions, but increases the value available to everyone as an equal participant in the common good.
In one industry after another, networks are beginning to compete with markets, and open common projects with private commercial activities. Microsoft, a traditional market company with tight proprietary control of its intellectual property, was unprepared for the advent of Linux. The first of many open networks, the Linux community includes thousands of programmers who work together, dedicating their time and knowledge to fixing bugs and improving the program used by millions. All changes, updates and improvements made to the program are in open access and are free for everyone on the Linux network. Hundreds of global companies such as Google, IBM, US Postal Service and Conoco have joined the open Linux network and become part of an ever-expanding global community of programmers and users.
The same can be said about these major publishing houses, like Britannica, Columbia and Encarta, which traditionally paid scientists to produce scientific articles for multi-volume hardcover encyclopedias containing the essence of the world's knowledge. They could not even imagine in their nightmares the appearance of Wikipedia. Just two decades ago, the very idea of hundreds of thousands of professional and amateur scientists from around the world collaborating to create scientific and popular articles on almost every conceivable topic, in every discipline, without any payment, and providing access to this information to everyone on the planet was unthinkable. Incredibly, the English edition of Wikipedia has more than 3.5 million articles - almost 30 times more than the Encyclopedia Britannica. What's even more amazing is that tens of thousands of people check the factual information and references in these articles, bringing them to the same level of accuracy as traditional encyclopedias. Today, Wikipedia is the eighth most visited site on the Internet, attracting 13% of Internet visitors every day.
There are networks for sharing music, videos, health information, travel recommendations and thousands of other things. Horizontal search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook and Myspace have changed the way we work and play. Tens of thousands of social networks, connecting millions and even hundreds of millions of people, have mushroomed in less than 15 years, creating new distributed spaces for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and bringing creativity and innovation to every field. Many of these open platforms serve as incubators for the creation of new businesses, some of which remain in the general cyberspace, and some of which enter the marketplace or the non-profit sector.
Rethinking the way we do things
Nothing better illustrates the industrial lifestyle than highly capitalized, giant, centralized factories, mechanized and maintained by production workers who produce consumer goods on assembly lines. However, what if millions of people could produce small batches of goods or even single items in their own homes or businesses, cheaper and faster and with the same quality control as most of the most modern factories on earth?
If the economy of the third industrial revolution allows millions of people to produce their own energy, then the new digital manufacturing revolution opens up the opportunity to follow the example of large factories in the production of durable goods. IN new era everyone will be able to potentially fulfill the role of producer of goods for themselves, as well as their own energy company. Welcome to the world of distributed manufacturing.
The process is called 3D printing. Although this looks like science fiction, it already exists and promises to completely change the way we think about industrial production. This process is amazing.
Just imagine clicking the “print” button on your computer and sending the file to an inkjet printer, not a regular one, but a 3D printer, which produces a three-dimensional product.
Software controls a 3D printer so that it creates a product from successive layers of powder, melted plastic or metal. At the same time, a 3D printer is capable of reproducing many copies of a product, similar to a photocopying machine. Any product, from jewelry to mobile phones, automobiles and aircraft parts, medical implants and batteries are simply “printed”, a process called “additive manufacturing” as opposed to “subtractive manufacturing”, which involves cutting materials into pieces, selecting suitable elements and joining them together. Industry analysts predict that millions of customers will routinely download digital models of customized industrial products and “print them out” in their businesses or homes.
3D entrepreneurs are particularly optimistic about additive manufacturing because the process requires only 10% of the raw materials used in traditional manufacturing and less energy than conventional factory production, allowing for significant cost savings. As new technology becomes more widespread, 3D printing of customized industrial products at the point of use just in time will significantly reduce logistics costs and potentially energy consumption. The energy saved at every stage of the digital manufacturing process as a result of reduced material use, lower energy intensity of production and elimination of energy costs for transportation, across the entire global economy, will provide a quantum leap in energy efficiency that was unimaginable during the first and second industrial revolutions. .
If we consider that the energy used in the process will come from renewable sources and be generated at the point of consumption, then the full effect of the horizontal third industrial revolution becomes abundantly clear. If the Internet has radically reduced the input costs of generating and distributing information and thus opened the way for new companies like Google and Facebook, then additive manufacturing, with its enormous potential for reducing the cost of durable goods, can make input costs low enough to attract hundreds of thousands of mini-manufacturers, small and mid-sized companies that will challenge and perhaps outmaneuver the giant manufacturing companies that formed the backbone of the first and second industrial revolutions.
The 3D printing market is already experiencing an influx of new startups with names like Within Technologies, Digital Forming, Shape Ways, Rapid Quality Manufacturing and Stratasys that are determined to change the very idea of manufacturing in the era of the third industrial revolution. Production is becoming horizontal, and this will have enormous consequences for society.
To get a sense of how the distributed, collaborative business model differs from the traditional model of the 19th and 20th centuries, look at Etsy, a fast-growing, young Internet company that got off the ground in less than four years. Etsy was founded by a young New York University graduate, Rob Kalin, who made furniture out of his home. Faced with a lack of outlets for potential buyers of handmade furniture, he teamed up with his friends and created a website where individual craftsmen of all specialties and potential buyers could find each other. The site has become a global virtual showroom, a meeting place for millions of buyers and sellers from more than fifty countries, inspiring new life into craft production - an art that has almost disappeared under the onslaught of modern industrial capitalism.
Weaving and many other crafts fell victim industrial production at the dawn of the first industrial revolution. Local cottage industries could not compete with the centralized factory production and economies of scale made possible by large investments of financial capital. Factory-made goods were simply cheaper, and this brought hand-made production to the brink of almost complete extinction.
The Internet has changed the nature of the playing field, leveling the playing field. Contacts between millions of sellers and buyers in the virtual space are established almost free of charge. By replacing every middleman—from wholesalers to retailers—with a distributed network of millions of people, and by eliminating the transaction costs that drive up prices at every step of the supply chain, Etsy has created a new global craft marketplace that's growing outward, not outward. relying on horizontal rather than vertical interactions.
The new business practice of cooperation is penetrating into every corner economic life. Agricultural production supported by the local community - good example the impact of the business model of the third industrial revolution on the process of growing and distributing agricultural products. After a century of petrochemical-based agriculture that led to the near-destruction of family farms and the emergence of giant agribusinesses like Cargill and ADM, a new generation of farmers has emerged with direct ties to the households that buy their products. Community-supported agriculture originated in Europe and Japan in the 1960s. and spread to America in the mid-1980s.
Shareholders, usually urban households, contribute a fixed amount before the planting season to cover annual farming costs. In exchange, they receive a share of the farm's harvest during the fruiting season. In practice, this is usually a box of ripe fruits and vegetables delivered directly to your home or specific location. This provides consumers with a constant flow of fresh, local produce throughout the growing season.
The farms, for the most part, follow organic farming practices and use natural and organic methods to grow produce. Because community-supported agriculture is a joint venture based on sharing risks between farmers and consumers, the latter benefit in good years and lose in bad years. In case of unfavorable weather conditions or other setbacks, shareholders put up with a reduction in weekly supplies of certain products. This equal sharing of risks and rewards binds all shareholders and makes them participants in a common enterprise.
The Internet has made it possible to connect farmers and consumers in a distributed, collaborative structure to organize the food supply chain. In just a few years, community-supported agriculture has grown from a handful of pilot projects to nearly 3,000 businesses serving tens of thousands of families.
The business model of community-supported agriculture is particularly appealing to younger generations who are accustomed to the idea of collaboration in a digital social space. Its growth in popularity is also due to increased consumer awareness and desire to reduce adverse environmental impacts. With the elimination of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, carbon dioxide emissions from long-distance food transport across oceans and continents, and the advertising, marketing and other costs associated with traditional production and distribution chains of the second industrial revolution, every shareholder begins to live a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle . More and more farmers involved in community-supported agriculture are turning their properties into mini-power plants using wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy, dramatically reducing energy costs. Shareholders also benefit from this saving, for whom the annual membership fee and subscription cost are reduced.
Again, as with so many cooperative new ventures taking over one business sector after another, horizontal growth can and often does prevail over the traditional centralized approach of creating giant organizations that grow vertically and organize economic activity hierarchically.
Some of the companies most associated with traditional centralized market capitalism are already experiencing competition from the new distributed, collaborative business model. Take, for example, the automobile, a key element of the second industrial revolution. The transition to a third industrial revolution economy, with its emphasis on improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions, has led to the emergence of non-profit car sharing networks around the world.
In America, car sharing networks cover the entire country. Cleveland's City Wheels, Minneapolis/St. Paul's HourCar, Philadelphia's Car Share, Chicago's I-Go and San Francisco's City Car Share are just a few of the new breed of online nonprofits providing transportation to hundreds of thousands of users. By paying a nominal membership fee, people join the car sharing network and receive a smart card that gives them access to parking lots and cars. Users pay per mileage, but since most of these organizations are non-profits, their costs are lower than those of large car rental companies. Many of these organizations have a fleet of the most energy efficient vehicles available on the market.
I-Go in Chicago even provides an innovative Internet service that allows members to arrange a trip from point A to point B using different types transport on the route. The user can, for example, go on a trip by rail or bus, and then take a car and drive the rest of the way. The goal is to minimize vehicle mileage and thus significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
It is estimated that each shared vehicle takes up to 20 cars off the road. Netizens say their car miles traveled are down by about 44%. The reduction in carbon dioxide emissions can be very significant. Communauto, a Canadian car-sharing service based in Quebec, reported that its 11,000 members have reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by 13,000 tonnes. A study in Europe found that carpooling reduced carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 50%.
Zipcar, the world's largest car sharing company, is a for-profit organization founded in 2000. In just a decade, its membership has grown to hundreds of thousands. There are several thousand Zipcar dealerships around the world, with more than 8,000 vehicles in stock. The company, whose revenue reached $130 million in 2009, is growing at a phenomenal rate of 30% per year. In 2010, Zipcar launched a hybrid vehicle pilot project in San Francisco. The company is popular among those aware of the problem environment millennials who even call themselves zipsters.
With the rise of renewable energy and the development of Industrial Revolution 3 infrastructure, the parking lots of shared car networks like Zipcar will produce green electricity on site to charge plug-in electric vehicles. Car-sharing communities are likely to provide a significant alternative to the traditional model of purchasing cars from markets, especially in dense urban areas where the cost of maintaining a car for infrequent trips is prohibitive.
Part of the responsibility that goes with being part of a global community is preserving our shared biosphere by living more sustainably. Hosting more than a million tourists for free in local homes through Couch Surfing significantly reduces carbon emissions compared to those of more energy-intensive hotels.
The emerging economy of the third industrial revolution is giving rise to collaborative companies that were unheard of just a few years ago. Even large global companies are getting into the game. Some new business models are so unusual and unconventional that they require a complete rethinking of the nature of commercial transactions. A case in point are so-called energy efficiency contracts.
Companies like Philips Lightning are contracting with the city to install next-generation high-efficiency LED bulbs in lighting fixtures throughout in public places and on the streets. Philips Bank is financing the project, and the city makes payments to Philips over several years from the energy savings. If Philips fails to achieve the planned savings, the company suffers a loss. This type of cooperation will eventually become the norm in the economy of the third industrial revolution.
The “Energy Savings Revenue Sharing Agreement” is another Third Industrial Revolution business model that is similar to energy efficiency contracts but aims at different outcomes. This new business practice is spreading to the residential real estate market in a number of countries with some success. While in America 68% of families own their homes, in other countries the vast majority of families rent. For example, in Spain and Germany, more than half of families live in rented apartments. In places where renting dominates, property owners have little incentive to retrofit their buildings into mini-power plants since the utility bills are paid by tenants. In Switzerland, where only 30% of households own their own homes and the majority are renters, some homeowners enter into agreements with tenants to share the benefits of energy savings. Under the terms of this agreement, the homeowner commits to turning the house into a green mini-power plant, and the tenants give a portion of the income from the reduced energy charges to the homeowner over the payback period of his investment. The homeowner ends up with a higher value building because it now generates its own green electricity. The added value may justify a rent increase for new residents, but the increase is less than the energy bill savings they will receive. Thus, both the landlord and the tenants benefit.
If the global economy is to successfully transition to the infrastructure of the third industrial revolution, then entrepreneurs and managers will have to learn to use all advanced business models, including open networks, distributed and collaborative research and development strategies, environmentally sustainable logistics and supply chain management techniques.
Social entrepreneurship
The cooperative nature of the new economy is fundamentally at odds with classical economic theory, which exalts the pursuit of personal gain in the market and presents it as the only effective way to achieve economic growth. The Third Industrial Revolution model also rejects the centralized command and control system traditionally associated with socialist economies. The new model gravitates towards horizontal enterprises, both in social communities and in the marketplace, and assumes that the best path to environmentally sustainable economic development- these are common goals that are achieved together.
The new era represents the democratization of enterprise - everyone becomes an energy producer - and requires cooperation to share and distribute energy among neighbors, regions and entire continents.
The economy of the third industrial revolution is imbued with a spirit of social entrepreneurship spanning the globe. Entrepreneurship and collaboration are no longer seen as contradictory, but as a commitment to transforming economic, social and political life in the 21st century.
Social entrepreneurs are emerging from universities around the world and creating new companies that combine the for-profit and non-profit sectors - the kind of hybrids that are likely to become commonplace in the coming years. Have you ever heard of TOMS? This company, which has both commercial and non-commercial components, makes shoes, and not just any shoes, but shoes from sustainable, organic, recycled and even plant-based materials. However, this is only the beginning of the story about the shoe business, which is perhaps the most extraordinary in the world. The prototype of its products with a canvas or cotton upper was the traditional shoes worn by Argentine farmers from time immemorial, the so-called alpargata. The company was founded by Blake Mycoskie, a young social entrepreneur from Arlington, Texas, in 2006. TOMS shoes are sold in more than 500 stores in the United States and abroad, including Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Whole Foods.
The commercial side of Mycoskie's business, which is based in Santa Monica, California, has already sold more than a million pairs of shoes. However, this is not what is interesting. In return for the sale of each pair, the non-profit wing of the business, known as Friends of TOMS, donates a pair of shoes to children in need in different parts of the world. More than a million free pairs of shoes were distributed through a one-for-one initiative to poor children in the United States, Haiti, Guatemala, Argentina, Ethiopia, Rwanda and South Africa.
Why would you give away a free pair of shoes for every pair sold, you ask? Mycoskie says children are not allowed to go to school without shoes in many of the world's poorest regions. Barefoot children are at risk of contracting a disease called podoconiosis, or chromomycosis, which is soil-borne. It is caused by a fungus that penetrates the pores of the sole and destroys the human lymphatic system. According to some estimates, more than a billion people are at risk of contracting soil-borne diseases. The simplest means of prevention is shoes.
What happens to those millions of pairs of shoes when they wear out? The TOMS Community Wall website invites customers to submit ideas to recycle it and turn it into something useful - bracelets, soccer balls, plant pendants, coasters, etc. TOMS demonstrates the new model of social entrepreneurship that has emerged in the era of the third industrial revolution .
The changing approach to doing business has sparked a battle of epic proportions between the old guard of the Second Industrial Revolution, who are determined to hold on to what remains of their power, and the young entrepreneurs of the Third Industrial Revolution, who are no less committed to promoting a horizontal, environmentally sustainable economy in the world. At stake is the fundamental question of who will control energy in the 21st century global economy. Both sides seek market advantage and use lobbying to obtain preferential status, including government subsidies and tax incentives worth billions of dollars.
In fact, the question should be: “Where do industry and government want to be in 20 years: stuck with the fading energy sources, technologies and infrastructure of the exhausted second industrial revolution, or in the process of transition to new energy sources, technologies and infrastructure of the emerging third industrial revolution?” "
The answer is obvious, but the transition to a new era of distributed capitalism is unlikely to be an easy walk. The problem is this moment It's not the lack of a transition plan - we have one.
The Third Industrial Revolution is a smart path to the post-carbon era. The catch is in society's perception of it.
This is where we run into a misconception about how economic revolutions happen that borders on delusional.
Every head of state - be he a democrat, an autocrat or even a dictator (except for the most stupid and crazed rulers) - always or at least sometimes asks himself: where is my country heading? Where is human progress heading? Is our movement in one direction? But it’s interesting - does anyone in the Kremlin ask anyone similar questions?...
The First Industrial Revolution, powered by coal, and the Second Industrial Revolution, powered by oil and gas, fundamentally changed the life and work of mankind and transformed the face of the planet. However, these two revolutions brought humanity to the limit of development. For the first time in the history of mankind, they “sailed”, i.e. moved from stationary levels, the most important indicators of the state of the biosphere. These indicators include: a sharp deterioration in the quality of air, water, food, public health and protection from infections; global warming; reduction of biodiversity; reaching the limit of water, food, raw materials and energy capabilities of the biosphere; loss of moral guidelines by a significant part of the human community (the so-called “phenomenon of the immoral majority”). The monument to our generation will apparently look like this: in the middle of a huge sludge dump there is a majestic bronze figure in a gas mask, and below on a granite pedestal there is the inscription: “We conquered nature!”
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The words of M. Lermontov sound prophetic:
And our ashes, with the severity of a judge and a citizen,
A descendant will insult with a contemptuous verse,
The bitter mockery of a deceived son
Over the wasted father.
And humanity is responding to these challenges with the Third Industrial Revolution.
"Third Industrial Revolution"
(Third Industrial Revolution - TIR) is a concept of human development, the authors of which are Americans: economist and ecologist Jeremy Rifkin and futurist Raymond Kurzweil. I also took the liberty of somewhat supplementing and expanding this concept, which consists of 12 points.
1)
Transition to renewable energy sources
- sun, wind, natural water flows (wws - wind, water, sunlight), geothermal waters, in the distant future - high- or low-energy nuclear fusion (Lockheed Martin Corp. recently announced that it has made technological progress in developing an energy source based on fusion, and the first 100-megawatt reactors small enough to fit in the back of a truck could go into production within 10 years). Already today, 20% of the electricity consumed in Germany comes from renewable sources, and by 2020 their share will increase to 35%. The share of electricity generated by wind turbines in the United States was a record 5%. A recent report from Deutsche Bank notes that in India and Italy, the cost of unsubsidized solar power is already equal to the cost of electricity from the grid. In addition, in the gas market, after the “shale” one, an even more radical “methane hydrate revolution” is coming. Currently, global methane reserves in “conventional” deposits are about 180 trillion. cubic meters(Russia’s share is about 50 trillion). Another 240 trillion cubic meters of methane are stored in shale deposits. Total - somewhere around 420 trillion cubic meters. But the total volume of methane in underwater gas hydrates is estimated at 20 thousand trillion cubic meters (!), that is, 50 times more than already known! These reserves will be enough for several centuries of the most “brutal” exploitation. Huge reserves of methane are stored mainly on the seabed. Methane is there in bound form- in the form of solid crystals of methane-water composition 1:6. In 2013, Japan - the first of all the “contenders” - began experimental methane production using a unique technology (JAMSTEC).
2) Converting existing and new buildings (both industrial and residential) into mini-factories for energy production
(by equipping them with solar panels, mini-windmills, heat pumps, heat recovery units, etc.). Such houses will not need “external” energy (the so-called “zero house” - “zero house”). For example, there are about 200 million buildings in the European Union. Each of them can become a small power plant, drawing energy from roofs, walls, heat from exhaust ventilation and sewer flows, and garbage. Thus, researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a new generation of large-area luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) based on the synthesis of cutting-edge quantum dots, which they were able to embed in a transparent polymer to capture energy from the sun. LSCs are particularly attractive because, in addition to increasing efficiency, they can be integrated into interesting new concepts - such as photovoltaic windows, which can turn house facades into large local energy generators. The third industrial revolution for residential and industrial premises is a myriad of small energy sources from wind, solar, water, geothermal, heat pumps, biomass, etc. In several countries - China, the USA, the UAE - even “zero skyscrapers” have already been designed and begun to be built.
3)
Development and implementation of energy and resource saving technologies
(both industrial and residential sectors) - complete recycling of residual flows and losses of electricity, steam, gas, water, any heat, food flows, complete recycling of industrial and household waste, etc. Thus, electricity losses in US networks average 6 .5% (about 250 billion kWh annually); Electricity losses in Russian power grids average 15% (over 100 billion kWh/year). The complete transition of all lighting to LEDs (“blue”, LED-light-emitting diode, SSL-solid-state lighting) - 10 million such lamps instead of “incandescent lamps” - makes it possible to replace one power unit of a nuclear power plant or state district power plant with a capacity of 1 MegaW. A study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations showed that every year 1.3 billion tons (!), or a third of all food produced for consumption, are wasted or lost in the world. In developed countries, more than 40% of losses occur at the retail and consumption stages (i.e., they are literally thrown into the trash, either by stores because their expiration date has expired, or by consumers because they simply did not have time to eat them). For example, in the United States, about 25% of all food produced is thrown away. In the size of the country, their economic value is over $100 billion/year, and their production consumes about 300 million barrels of oil per year. (But in developing countries, more than 50% of losses in the food industry occur as a result of transportation, storage and subsequent processing.) The main thing is to understand that the cost of saving one megawatt of energy or one ton of food is tens of times less than for their new production and transportation!
4)
Conversion of all vehicles (passenger cars and trucks) to electric traction
(fuel cells using “bound” hydrogen or a powerful block of high-capacity electric batteries with fast recharging; in this case, the electric motor will be built directly into the car wheel). The Japanese company Sekisui Chemical introduced ultra-thin and ultra-high-capacity lithium-ion batteries; new batteries have 5 times higher capacity and their cost is 10 times lower. In the USA, “cellular” batteries with anodes made of silicon-carbon nanocomposites have been developed; their capacity is 10-15 times higher and they can withstand several thousand charging cycles. Conversion of aircraft to “hybrid” propulsion (fuel - liquid or liquefied gas - plus a block of high-capacity batteries), which will reduce fuel consumption and noise levels of airliners by 50%. Development of high-speed and ultra-high-speed (over 1000 km/h - in a “vacuum tube”) public passenger transport. Development of new economical types of freight transport, such as large airships (up to 200 tons of payload), underground pneumatic transport, etc. Currently, more than one billion internal combustion engines are in operation in the world. At the same time, the efficiency of the internal combustion engine is low - on average 25%, i.e. When burning 10 liters of gasoline, only 2.5 liters are used “for its intended purpose.” But the average efficiency of an electric drive is 75%, three times higher than that of an internal combustion engine, and the thermodynamic efficiency of a fuel cell is about 90%. Recently, the “hydrogen car” of the US Department of Energy Livermore National Laboratory traveled over 1000 kilometers on one “hydrogen filling” (5 kg).
5)
The transition from industrial to local and even “home” production of most household goods thanks to the development of technology 3
D
-printers
. Unlike conventional printers, 3D printers do not print photographs and texts, but “things” - industrial goods. Those. 3D printers allow you to create almost anything from a digital three-dimensional model entered into memory. A 3D printer also has cartridges, but not with ink, but with working materials that replace them - plastic granules, dry cement or gypsum, metal powders, etc. According to calculations by economists from the University of Michigan, a “home” 3D printer provides a return on investment from 40% to 200% per year - so the production of household goods is expected to undergo a “3D revolution” (Good bye, “made in China”?).
The Natural Machines company will begin production of the first “food” printer “Foodini” in 2014, which is aimed at radically reforming the kitchen industry. He will take on the labor-intensive and complex work of a chef and will be able to print (from natural ingredients!) almost all solid products: from fancy-shaped cakes and chocolates to ravioli and so on.
The Danish company DUS Architects plans to build a full-size house by printing its components on a huge KamerMaker 3D printer directly on the construction site (the KamerMaker 3D printer is impressive in size - its height is 3.5 meters). If you also use the almost deserted method of “outline construction” (developed by the University of Southern California), the house can be built in 24 hours. Apparently, the construction industry is also facing a “3D revolution”.
Household and simple technical goods will be sent to the buyer by email– i.e. the buyer will buy a “software matrix for 3D printing” - a wrench, a ceramic vase or leather gloves, and the buyer will produce the product itself on a home 3D printer. By the way, it is the production of these same “software matrices for 3D printing” that will become the gigantic business of the future and the cradle of new billionaires.
Where will the money come from for all this, since Europe, America, and Japan are drowning in debt? But every year a development budget is laid down everywhere - every country plans it. It is important to invest in things that have a future, rather than in keeping alive infrastructures, technologies, industries or systems that are doomed to extinction. Alas, industrial revolutions are not only “the path to a bright future.” They cause the depreciation of productive assets, knowledge and experience of people, and even the bankruptcy of entire states. People and countries that were confident in their future suddenly find that activities and products that were an important part of their economy are no longer needed. This entails such sad phenomena as financial crises, bankruptcies, and unemployment. Therefore, another task of the 3rd Industrial Revolution -
the entire liberated huge intellectual and labor potential of civilization will have to be redirected to space exploration - there is nowhere else.
As a matter of fact, the “advanced part” of humanity has recently been actively moving along this path. I would like to express the hope that “global TIR” will happen much sooner before that the moment when humanity exhausts all natural reserves of coal, oil, gas and uranium, and at the same time completely destroys the natural environment. After all, the Stone Age did not end because the Earth ran out of stones...
Agriculture of the future will not require pesticides
The expert community is increasingly aware that further development civilization along the historically established path is impossible, since new ones have now appeared global problems threatening the existence of this civilization. For the first time in human history, the most important indicators of the state of the biosphere have shifted from stationary levels.
These indicators include: a sharp deterioration in air and water quality; global warming; ozone layer depletion; reduction of biodiversity; reaching the limit of food, raw material and energy capabilities of the biosphere; loss of moral guidelines by a significant part of the human community (the so-called “phenomenon of the immoral majority”).
The monument to our generation will apparently look like this: in the middle of a huge sludge dump stands a majestic bronze figure in a gas mask, and below on a granite pedestal is the inscription: “We defeated nature!”
The First Industrial Revolution, powered by coal, and the Second Industrial Revolution, powered by oil and gas, fundamentally changed the life and work of mankind and transformed the face of the planet. However, these two revolutions brought humanity to the limit of development. Among the main challenges facing humanity are environmental problems (see above), depletion of biological resources and traditional energy sources. And humanity must respond to these challenges with the THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
“The Third Industrial Revolution” (Third Industrial Revolution - TIR) is a concept of human development, authored by the American scientist - economist and ecologist - Jeremy Rifkin. Here are the main provisions of the TIR concept:
1) Transition to renewable energy sources(sun, wind, water flows, geothermal sources).
Although “green” energy has not yet taken up a large segment in the world (no more than 3-4%), investments in it are growing at a tremendous pace. Thus, in 2008, $155 billion was spent on green energy projects ($52 billion in wind energy, $34 billion in solar energy, $17 billion in biofuels, etc.), and for the first time this was more than investment in fossil fuels .
Over the last three years alone (2009-2011), the total capacity of solar stations installed in the world has tripled (from 13.6 GW to 36.3 GW). If we talk about all renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal and marine energy, bioenergy and small hydropower), then the installed capacity of power plants in the world using renewable energy sources already in 2010 exceeded the capacity of all nuclear power plants and amounted to about 400 GW.
At the end of 2011, the price in Europe of one kWh of “green” energy for consumers was: hydropower - 5 eurocents, wind - 10 eurocents, solar - 20 eurocents (for comparison: conventional thermal - 6 eurocents). However, the expected scientific and technological breakthroughs in solar energy will allow by 2020 a sharp drop in prices for solar panels and reduce the turnkey price of 1 watt of solar power from $2.5 to $0.8-1, which will allow generating “green energy”. » electricity at a price lower than from the cheapest coal-fired thermal power plants.
2) Transformation of existing and new buildings (both industrial and residential) into mini-factories for energy production (by equipping them with solar panels, mini-windmills, heat pumps). For example, there are 190 million buildings in the European Union. Each of them can become a small power plant, drawing energy from roofs, walls, warm ventilation and sewer flows, and garbage. It is necessary to gradually say goodbye to the large energy suppliers generated by the Second Industrial Revolution - based on coal, gas, oil, uranium. The third industrial revolution is a myriad of small energy sources from wind, solar, water, geothermal, heat pumps, biomass, including municipal solid and “sewage” municipal waste, etc.
3) Development and implementation of energy-resource-saving technologies(both industrial and “home”) - complete recycling of residual flows and losses of electricity, steam, water, any heat, complete recycling of industrial and household waste, etc.
4) Transfer of all automobiles (passenger cars and trucks) and all public transport to electric traction based on hydrogen energy (plus the development of new economical types of freight transport such as airships, underground pneumatic transport, etc.).
Currently, more than one billion internal combustion engines are in use in the world (cars and trucks, tractors, agricultural and construction equipment, military equipment, ships, aviation, etc.), which annually burn about one and a half billion tons of motor fuel (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel) and have a depressing effect on the natural environment.
According to InternationalEnergyAgency, more than half of the world's oil consumption is used for transportation. In the USA, transport accounts for about 70% of all oil consumed, in Europe - 52%; no wonder that 65% of oil is consumed in major cities(in total - 30 million barrels of oil per day!).
Wolfgang Schreiberg, one of the leaders of Volkswagen, cited interesting statistics: b O The majority of urban commercial vehicles in most countries travel no more than 50 km per day, and the average speed of these vehicles is 5-10 km/h; however, with such meager figures, these cars consume an average of liters of motor fuel per 100 km! B O Most of this fuel is burned at traffic lights, in traffic jams or during minor loading and unloading (or at stops for public transport) with the engine not turned off.
NationalRenewableEnergyLaboratory (USA) in its calculations used an average passenger car range of 12,000 miles per year (19,200 km), hydrogen consumption of 1 kg per 60 miles (96 km). Those. One passenger car requires 200 kg of hydrogen per year, or 0.55 kg per day.
Recently, the US Department of Energy's Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) "hydrogen car" traveled 1,046 kilometers on a single hydrogen refueling.
The average efficiency of internal combustion engines is low - on average 25%, i.e. When 10 liters of gasoline are burned, 7.5 liters go down the drain. The average efficiency of an electric drive is 75%, three times higher (and the thermodynamic efficiency of a fuel cell is about 90%); Hydrogen car exhausts are only H2O.
It is important to note that if the movement of a traditional car requires oil (gasoline, diesel), which not every country has, then hydrogen is obtained from water (even sea water) using electricity, which, unlike oil, can be obtained from various sources - coal, gas, uranium, water flows, sun, wind, etc., and any country necessarily has something from this “set”.
5) The transition from industrial to local and even “home” production of most household goods thanks to the development of technology 3 D-printers.
A 3D printer is a device that uses a layer-by-layer method for creating a physical object based on a virtual 3D model. Unlike conventional printers, 3D printers do not print photographs and texts, but “things”—industrial and household goods. Otherwise they are very similar. As in conventional printers, two layer formation technologies are used - laser and inkjet. A 3D printer also has a “printing” head and “ink” (more precisely, a working material that replaces them). In fact, 3D printers are the same specialized industrial machines with numerical control, but on a completely new scientific and technical basis of the 21st century.
6) Transition from metallurgy to carbon-based composite materials (especially nano-materials), as well as replacement of metallurgy with technology 3 D-printing based on selective laser melting (SLM - SelectiveLaserMelting).
For example, the newest American Boeing 787-Dreamliner is the world's first aircraft made of 50% carbon-based composite materials. The new airliner's wings and fuselage are made from composite polymers. The widespread use of carbon fiber compared to traditional aluminum has made it possible to significantly reduce the weight of the aircraft and reduce fuel use by 20% without loss of speed.
The American-Israeli company ApNano has created nanomaterials - “inorganic fullerenes” (IF), which are many times stronger and lighter than steel. Thus, in experiments, IF samples based on tungsten sulfide stopped steel projectiles flying at a speed of 1.5 km/sec, and also withstood a static load of 350 tons/sq.cm. These materials can be used to create hulls for missiles, aircraft, ships and submarines, skyscrapers, cars, armored vehicles and for other purposes.
NASA decided to use 3D printing technology based on selective laser melting as a replacement for metallurgy. Recently, a complex part for a space rocket was made using 3D laser printing, in which a laser fuses metal dust into a part of any shape - without a single seam or screw connection. Manufacturing complex parts using SLM technology using 3D printers takes a matter of days instead of months; in addition, SLM technologies make production 35-55% cheaper.
7) Refusal from animal husbandry, transition to the production of “artificial meat” from animal cells using 3 D- bioprinters;
The American company ModernMeadow has invented the technology for the “industrial” production of animal meat and natural leather. The process of creating such meat and skin will involve several steps. First, scientists collect millions of cells from donor animals. These can range from livestock to exotic species, which are often killed just for their skin. These cells will then be multiplied in bioreactors. In the next step, the cells will be centrifuged to remove the nutrient fluid and combine them into a single mass, which will then be formed into layers using a 3D bioprinter. These layers of cells will be placed back into the bioreactor, where they will “mature.” The skin cells will form collagen fibers, and the “meat” cells will form actual muscle tissue. This process will take several weeks, after which the muscle and fat tissue can be used for food production, and the skin can be used for shoes, clothing, and bags. Producing meat in a 3D bioprinter will require three times less energy and 10 times less water than producing the same amount of pork, and especially beef, using conventional methods, and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 20 times compared to emissions when raising livestock on land. slaughter (after all, currently, to produce 15 g of animal protein, you need to feed 100 g of vegetable protein to livestock, so the efficiency of the traditional method of producing meat is only 15%). An artificial “meat plant” requires much less land (taking up only 1% of the land compared to a conventional farm of the same meat production capacity). In addition, from a test tube in a sterile laboratory you can get an environmentally friendly product, without any toxic metals, worms, giardia and other “charms” often present in raw meat. In addition, artificially grown meat does not violate ethical standards: there will be no need to raise livestock and then mercilessly kill it.
8) Transfer of part of agriculture to cities based on the technology of “vertical farms” (VerticalFarm).
Where will the money come from for all this, since both Europe and America are drowning in debt? But everywhere a development budget is laid out every year - every country and almost every city plans it. It is important to invest in things that have a future, rather than in keeping alive infrastructures, technologies, industries or systems that are doomed to extinction.
I would like to express the hope that “global TIR” will happen much earlier than the moment when humanity exhausts all natural reserves of coal, oil, gas and uranium, and at the same time completely destroys the natural environment.
After all, the Stone Age did not end because the Earth ran out of stones...
Mikhail Krasnyansky
