The Nord-Pas-de-Calais region and the third industrial revolution

A meeting between Daniel Percheron (President of the regional council)‚ Philippe Vasseur (President of the regional chamber of commerce and industry) and Jeremy Rifkin (author and visionary) was the catalyst which resulted in a surprising and dynamic project in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. Jeremy Rifkin’s thesis is simple and galvanising. He claims that industrial revolutions are the result of a synergy between new communication technologies and new sources of energy. He contends that the first industrial revolution arose from the extraction of coal and the industrialisation of printing ; the second, from harnessing electricity and the emergence of methods of telecommunication ; and the third will come from the synergy between sources of renewable energy and the Internet. The Nord-Pas-de-Calais region experienced the first two revolutions, and Jeremy Rifkin is helping it to take the lead in the third. In 2013‚ Jeremy Rifkin, his team of experts and more than one hundred and twenty people from both public and private bodies in the region spent nine months devising a master plan. In 2014‚ the region and the regional chamber of commerce and industry started putting specific operations outlined in this programme into place.