I came across this really interesting article from an author that did a review on Jeremy Rivkin's book, The Third Industrial Revolution. I thought I would share it here, as it might help frame the scope and size of the infrastructure opportunities that lie ahead globally for the next few decades.
Basically what has happened globally is that most businesses and economies are still plugged into a second industrial revolution infrastructure of centralised telecommunication, fossil fuel, nuclear power, internal-combustion transportation for roads, rail, water and air transport. In order for economies to grow, we need to power our economies with third industrial revolution infrastructure, low carbon power sources, smart city infrastructure for automated vehicles and road transport and the digital platforms and communication systems to link them together.
What is clear to me is that there is going to a lot of infrastructure opportunities rolling out low carbon energy projects. A convergence of the communications internet seems to be converging with the digitised renewable-energy internet. Both of those internets are also converging with a digitised, automated GPS, and soon completely driver-less, road, rail, water, and air internet, to create three super internets. All of these internets ride on top of a platform called the Internet of Things.
I listened to a recent interview of Jeremy Rivkin addressing a group of students, and he says there would be huge amount of infrastructure investment for the next 40 years which would employ the next 2 generations in constructing these types of projects around the world.
