The Third Industrial Revolution
How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
What's it about
Are you ready for the next great economic revolution? Our current industrial model, built on fossil fuels, is collapsing. Discover the visionary five-pillar plan for a sustainable new era, one that promises to create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and a fundamentally more democratic economy. Learn how the convergence of internet technology and renewable energy is creating a new "Energy Internet." You'll explore how this powerful lateral network will transform how we generate, store, and share power, fundamentally reshaping our homes, businesses, and the global economy for generations to come.
Meet the author
Jeremy Rifkin is an influential economic and social theorist whose work has been embraced by the European Union and the People’s Republic of China. As president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, he has spent decades advising governments and global businesses on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of new technologies. This unique position at the intersection of policy, business, and innovation provided the foundation for his groundbreaking vision of a new economic era powered by renewable energy and the internet.
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The Script
Between 2000 and 2014, the world witnessed an unprecedented 98% drop in the cost of solar photovoltaic modules, a price collapse that made building new solar capacity cheaper than maintaining existing coal plants in many regions. During roughly the same period, global internet users surged from just over 400 million to nearly 3 billion, a sevenfold increase. While these two trends—one in energy, one in communication—were tracked in separate columns by economists and analysts, they were the twin engines of a new economic paradigm, signaling a fundamental shift in how we power our civilization and organize our economic life.
This convergence is the central focus for Jeremy Rifkin, an economist and social theorist who has spent decades advising governments and corporations on the deep economic changes that occur when new energy systems merge with new communication technologies. He observed how the First Industrial Revolution paired steam power with the printing press, and the Second combined centralized electricity with the telephone and automobile. Seeing the digital communication revolution colliding with a nascent renewable energy system, Rifkin recognized the same historical pattern emerging once again. He wrote 'The Third Industrial Revolution' to articulate this massive, unfolding transformation, providing a framework to understand and navigate the shift from a centralized, fossil-fuel-based economy to a distributed, collaborative, and renewably-powered future.
Module 1: The End of an Era and the Dawn of a New One
Rifkin begins with a stark diagnosis. The economic system we live in, the Second Industrial Revolution, is built on a foundation of fossil fuels. And that foundation is cracking. This is a systemic failure.
The 2008 economic collapse was an energy crisis. In July 2008, oil hit $147 a barrel. This shockwave paralyzed the global supply chain. Everything that depends on oil—from food production to shipping to manufacturing—became prohibitively expensive. Global purchasing power evaporated. The financial meltdown that followed was merely an aftershock. Rifkin argues the fossil fuel era has reached its endgame, making our globalized economy fundamentally unstable and unsustainable.
So what happens next? History offers a clue. Rifkin identifies a powerful pattern. Great economic revolutions occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. Think about the First Industrial Revolution. Steam-powered printing, a new communication medium, converged with coal and steam power. This created a literate workforce for the new factory and rail economy. Then came the Second Industrial Revolution. Electrical communication like the telephone merged with the internal combustion engine, powered by oil. This enabled the mass-production economy of the 20th century, with its sprawling suburbs and centralized corporate giants.
This brings us to today. We are at the beginning of a similar convergence. The Third Industrial Revolution, or TIR, is emerging from the fusion of internet communication technology and distributed renewable energy. Just as the internet decentralized information, this new revolution will decentralize energy. Power, both electrical and economic, is shifting from centralized, top-down hierarchies to distributed, collaborative networks. This is a complete rewiring of our economic and social infrastructure.