“The European Union’s priority task in the first half of the twenty-first century will be—to quote Jeremy Rifkin—‘to lead the way to the Third Industrial Revolution.’ Reducing CO₂ emissions is only part of the story: the time for a switch to a low-carbon economy has come.

This is no Utopia, no futuristic vision: in twenty-five years’ time, we will be able to construct each building as its own ‘mini power station’ producing clean and renewable energy for its own needs, with the surplus being made available for other purposes.

These are the pillars of the ‘Third Industrial Revolution,’ which Jeremy Rifkin has described so powerfully: greater use of renewable energies, the construction of buildings which produce their own energy, and the transition to the use of hydrogen for energy storage.

What is at stake is the future of the European Union—and we should not be so complacent as to understand the word ‘future’ as meaning only something which comes after us!

We must not miss the opportunity to usher in the Third Industrial Revolution: it offers us a chance to put the European economy on a forward-looking and sustainable footing and, in that way, to secure its competitiveness in the long term.”

—Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament, speaking at the European Union’s second Citizens’ Agora,
June 12, 2008