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In The Hydrogen Economy, bestselling
author Jeremy 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. While experts
had been saying that we had another forty or so years left
of cheap available crude oil, some of the world's leading
petroleum geologists are now suggesting that global oil
production could peak and begin a steep decline much sooner,
as early as the end of the decade. 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 years, 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 pour 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. The major automakers have spent
more than two billion dollars developing hydrogen cars,
buses, and trucks, and the first mass-produced vehicles
could be on the road in just a few years.
The hydrogen economy makes possible a vast
redistribution of power, in which today's centralized, top-down
flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities,
becomes obsolete. In the new era, says Rifkin, every human
being could become the producer as well as the consumer
of his or her own energy -- so called "distributed
generation." When millions of end users connect their
fuel cells into local, regional, and national hydrogen energy
webs (HEWS), using the same design principles and smart
technologies that made possible the World Wide Web, they
can begin to share energy -- peer-to-peer -- creating a
new decentralized form of energy use.
Hydrogen has the potential to end the world's
reliance on imported oil and help defuse 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,"
creating the first truly democratic energy regime in history.
Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author
of The End Of Work, The Biotech Century and
The Age of Access, each of which has been translated
into more than fifteen languages. Since 1994, Mr. Rifkin
has been a fellow at the Wharton School's Executive Education
Program, where he lectures to CEOs and senior corporate
management from around the world on new trends in science
and technology and their impacts on the global economy,
society, and the environment. He is president of the Foundation
on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.
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