The Energy Internet Explained, with Jeremy Rifkin | Big Think

The Energy Internet Explained, with Jeremy Rifkin

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Jeremy Rifkin on the coming revolution of the energy internet.

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Jeremy Rifkin:

Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author of twenty books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. His books have been translated into more than thirty five languages and are used in hundreds of universities, corporations and government agencies around the world.

On April 1st, 2014 Mr. Rifkin's published his latest book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. In 2011, Jeremy Rifkin published the New York Times bestseller The Third Industrial Revolution, which captured the attention of the world. Mr. Rifkin's vision of a sustainable, post carbon economic era has been endorsed by the European Union and the United Nations and embraced by world leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President François Hollande of France, and Premier Li Keqiang of China. Mr. Rifkin's other recent titles include, The Empathic Civilization, The Age of Access, The End of Work, The European Dream, The Biotech Century, and The Hydrogen Economy.

Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the European Union for the past decade. Mr. Rifkin also served as an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. He currently advises the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU and Asian heads of state.

Mr. Rifkin is the principle architect of the European Union's Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change. The Third Industrial Revolution was formally endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007 and is now being implemented by various agencies within the European Commission as well as in the 27 member-states.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Jeremy Rifkin: Well, we're all familiar with the first Internet, the communication Internet. We've been on it for 24/25 years most of us. We use the Internet all the time to communicate and send information. The energy Internet is very, very new. It's now actually being built out in places like Germany, in Denmark and across Europe so it's no longer academic. Here's how it works.

We are moving toward renewable energy across Europe. We have millions and millions now of buildings, homes, offices, factories, retail stores that have been transformed into micro power plants and they are producing their own green electricity on site, solar panels on the roof, vertical wind on the property, geothermal pumps for energy underneath the ground, bio converters to convert garbage to biomass energy in the kitchens, et cetera. In Germany alone we’ve retrofitted one million buildings, made them efficient, put in the insulation and put these new renewable technologies on the building. A million buildings are producing their own greens electricity. And there's a feed-in tariff that gives them premium for sending their electricity back to the grid, they get more than the market price. So now we're setting up storage and an energy Internet. You have to store these energies. The sun isn't always shining. Sometimes the wind blows at night, you want the electricity during the day so we're putting in all sorts of storage technologies like batteries, flywheels, capacitors and hydrogen. We're most bullish on hydrogen as a storage technology to store these energies so that you can use them when you need them. Because if the suns under the clouds you're in trouble, you've got to store it when the sun is out.

And now we're taking the electricity grid of Europe, the whole transmission grid and we're transforming it to an energy Internet using the same technology we used with the communication Internet. You know, today everywhere in the world, the transmission electricity grid is servo mechanical; it's 60 years old. It isn't even digitalized. It's designed to be centralized and go in one direction. Where the power is generated, nuclear fossil fuel power, then you send it to the passive consumer at the end of the line.

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