Xinhua: China, EU leading Third Industrial Revolution says expert
China, EU leading Third Industrial Revolution says expert
China and the European Union (EU) are leading a Third Industrial Revolution, paving the way to a sustainable economic era in the 21st century, a world renowned expert said here Tuesday. "There are three essential pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution which must be simultaneously developed and fully integrated for any one of these components to fully realized its potential and for the new economic paradigm to become operational: renewable energy, storage technology, and smart power grids," Jereny Rifkin, adviser to EU and U.S. governments and Fortune 500 companies, said at the CHINA NOW Sustainability Conference held in London.
The EU has begun the journey toward a Third Industrial Revolution by making a binding commitment that 20 percent of all EU energy be generated by renewable sources of energy of 2020 while China pledged in its 11th Five-Year Plan to have renewable energy rise to 15 percent in energy consumption by 2020. The EU and China are both engaged in developing technologies to store intermittent forms of renewable energy and creating intelligent utility networks to allow distributed forms of renewable energy, he said.
