The Third Industrial Revolution is an idea originated by the American economist and sociologist Jeremy Rifkin and developed in his book “The Third Industrial Revolution”. This idea has been supported by many organizations worldwide, among them, the European Parliament has made a Declaration requesting to the European Institutions and Governments to establish a green hydrogen economy based on renewable energies and the development of a Third Industrial Revolution in Europe.
Textile industry is today an emblematic industry in many of the developed countries with only a few direct employees compared to what it represented for the previous industrial revolutions. Picture from Pedro Ribeiro Simões (Flickr) (CC BY 2.0)
The first industrial revolution was initiated with the introduction of the steam engine during the second half of the 18th century in Great Britain, shaking up the current economy, based on that moment on agriculture and commerce. Later on, in the first decade of the 20th century, the electrical communication and the internal combustion engine produced the second industrial revolution basing the economic growth on fossil fuels. The outcome of the second industrial revolution is the globalization.
The Third Industrial Revolution will help to develop a more sustainable economy, will generate many benefits to the present society such as the creation of numerous jobs (today not existing), will manage all the new arising technologies and will help, among other benefits, to reduce the pollution levels worldwide, due to the use of renewable and sustainable energy sources. The reduction of the greenhouse emissions and the slow-down of the global warming are another causes of this new industrialization.
The consolidation of the Third Industrial Revolution through the massive use of renewable energies, fuel cells (basically hydrogen fuel cells) and the Internet communication will benefit people’s life and will increase the wealth of the planet, due to the universality and accessibility to these resources worldwide. This situation will, of course, generate more business, services and products, as it happened with the previous two industrial revolutions. We only have to think on how much our lives have changed thanks to the inventions and new products developed during 19th and 20th centuries.
Some of the benefits of this new industrialization range from lower the energy costs to secure the energy supply since the sustainable and renewable energy resources are basically free and inexhaustible (in a reasonable period of millions of years). Currently the situation is the opposite, our economy is based on fossil fuels which resources are limited and prices are every day higher.