In The Hydrogen Economy, best-selling author Jeremy Rifkintakes us on an eye-opening journey into the next great commercialera in history. He envisions the dawn of a new economy powered byhydrogen that will fundamentally change the nature of our market,political and social institutions, just as coal and steam power didat the beginning of the industrial age. Rifkin observes that we are fast approaching a criticalwatershed for the fossil-fuel era, with potentially direconsequences for industrial civilization. Experts had been sayingthat we had another forty or so years of cheap available crude oilleft. Now, however, some of the world?s leading petroleumgeologists are suggesting that global oil production could peak andbegin a steep decline much sooner, as early as the end of thisdecade, sending oil prices through the roof. While the fossil fuel era is entering its sunset years, a newenergy regime is being born that has the potential to remakecivilization. Hydrogen is the most basic and ubiquitous element inthe universe. It is the stuff of the stars and of our sun and, whenproperly harnessed, it is the ?forever fuel.? It neverruns out and produces no harmful CO2 emissions. Commercialfuel-cells powered by hydrogen are just now being introduced intothe market for home, office and industrial use. The majorautomakers have spent more than two billion dollars developinghydrogen cars, buses, and trucks, and the first mass-producedvehicles are expected to be on the road in just a few years. In the new era, says Rifkin, every human being could become theproducer as well as the consumer of his or her own energy ?so called ?distributed generation.? When millions ofend-users connect their fuel-cells into local, regional, andnational hydrogen energy webs (HEWs), using the same designprinciples and smart technologies that made possible the World WideWeb, they can begin to share energy ? peer-to-peer ?creating a new decentralized form of energy use. Hydrogen has the potential to end the world?s reliance onimported oil and help diffuse the dangerous geopolitical game beingplayed out between Muslim militants and Western nations. It willdramatically cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate theeffects of global warming. And because hydrogen is so plentiful andexists everywhere on earth, every human being could be?empowered,? making it the first truly democraticenergy regime in history.