Imagine the internet, only for energy.

Imagine that, as well as tens of millions of personal computers all linked together, exchanging information this way and that, you had tens of millions of personal power stations, pumping electricity to and fro.

Imagine if, working together, they made fossil fuels redundant, resolved all our fears about energy security, and kickstarted a new era of peer-to-peer power sharing. Oh, and made a decisive impact on climate change, too…

Then you’re imagining the sort of future laid out by Jeremy Rifkin, maverick economist and adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a clutch of EU leaders.

via Are we on the cusp of a third industrial revolution? | Green Futures Magazine.