October 5th, 2009
The Green Revolution is really about Hydrogen Convergence.
During the dotcom era, marketers fell in love with the phrase “Internet Revolution” and patted themselves on the back every time they used it. For those of us who had to justify the new infrastructure investments, we talked about the need for digital convergence. Now history is repeating itself and communities around world are being asked to make similar decisions about the “Green Revolution.”
The desire for a Green Revolution stems from a moral dilemma. Is it in our collective best interest to protect the environment where we all live or protect jobs? It is the answer to the question how do we stop climate change and become better stewards of the planet? However the business case and/or strategic intent that makes the Green Revolution possible will probably revolve around “hydrogen convergence.”
It was very hard to convince senior executives and board members of the need to spend money on Internet infrastructure. They were unimpressed by the quest to find the perfect killer application or build the network to run it on. But they understand the value of converging on a single communication backbone and avoiding the cost of redundancy.
We at the ebTDesign Forum suggest that advocates of renewable energy will find similar success when they start making the case for hydrogen convergence. All of our energy choices can be converted to hydrogen and distributed over a single hydrogen infrastructure. As every network engineer knows, there comes a time when it’s better to invest in a new backbone rather than patching the old one.
We’ve reached that point with the current power grid. It’s time to switch to distributed power generation and micro grids. However we can’t get there with the current 1930’s technology. There is, also, no home for traditional power companies in the Green Revolution without hydrogen convergence. The faster we make the necessary changes to our business cases, the sooner we can do some good for both the planet and our respective companies.
Zachary Alexander
Concepts: Green Revolution, hydrogen, jobs, strategic-intent