Italy is overflowing with renewable energy sources and could show the rest of the world how to live without oil, according to economist and philosopher Jeremy Rifkin. In an interview with ANSA, Rifkin expressed the hope that the government of Romano Prodi will follow through on election pledges to develop alternative energy and put Italy on the road to a hydrogen-based economy.
Rifkin, the founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends, has written 17 books on the impact of scientific and technological change on the world.
He says Italy, which consumes about six times the energy it produces, could greatly improve its position if it made full use of solar power, wind power, geothermal energy, hydro-electric power and biomasses. "Italy could lead the world out of the age of oil and into the age of hydrogen. But I think that so far it hasn't even scraped the surface of its potential," he said.
One of Rifkin's books, published in 2002, outlines his vision of a future economy in which energy can no longer come from oil because deposits will have been exhausted. He suggests replacing oil with hydrogen fuel cells. Rifkin, who advised Prodi on energy matters when he was EU president, praised him for introducing a 2 bln euro research programme aimed at the creation of an economy based on hydrogen.
He noted that Prodi's centre-left coalition won Italian elections earlier this year on a platform which contained a commitment to a "future based on renewable energies". In line with his vision of a world on the cusp of a third industrial revolution, this one based on the Internet and energy from hydrogen, Rifkin suggested a route ahead for this and coming Italian governments.
The first step, and one that could be extended to any country, was to map out in detail the renewable energy sources available in Italy.
Then, he said, the government should launch an energy- saving campaign so that the country could get by for the 25 or so years it would take to create the infrastructure of a hydrogen-based economy. The next step would be to spend a large amount of public and private sector funds on developing the technology needed to exploit the country's renewable energy sources.
Ultimately, there would be a system in which energy produced by solar panels or wind turbines would be used immediately and the excess used to create hydrogen. This would provide energy when natural sources could not. The last stage of Rifkin's plan involves the creation of an energy network with the same universal access as the Internet. Everybody would be connected and could take energy from or put energy into the network just as Internet users today can upload or download information.
Energy from the network would cost more than that produced by individual users from their own hydrogen deposits. This would encourage people to be sparing with energy and self-sufficient. "We need politicians, economic leaders and society in general to show a great deal of imagination," Rifkin said, calling for a nationwide debate on the future of energy in Italy.
