Excerpted from Livio de Santoli and Carlo Maria Drago:

“Mayor Gianni Alemanno and the city of Rome host a joint press conference with Jeremy Rifkin (the principal architect of the European Union’s Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan), on May 31st 2010, to release a master plan that will radically transform Rome into a Third Industrial Revolution economy, making it the first post-carbon city in the world. Rome’s green economic recovery plan, which involves the investment of billions of euros over the next twenty years, is a bold and far-reaching initiative designed to revitalize Rome’s economy by spawning new industries and businesses and creating tens of thousands of new jobs.

The Rome Third Industrial Revolution Master Plan was prepared by the Jeremy Rifkin Group—comprised of 100 of the world’s leading renewable energy companies, construction companies, architectural firms, IT companies, power and utility companies and transport and logistic companies, including Philips, IBM, Schneider Electric, Arup, Q-Cells, KEMA, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, etc.—in collaboration with Mayor Alemanno, Professor Livio de Santoli, Energy Coordinator for the Mayor, and more than 40 experts from the City of Rome.

In June 2007, the European Parliament formally endorsed a four-pillar, long-term sustainable economic development plan to transition the EU to a Third Industrial Revolution, with the aim of making Europe the flagship for a green economic recovery for the world. The Third Industrial Revolution plan is now being implemented by various agencies within the European Commission, as well as in the 27 member states.

The announcement of the Third Industrial Revolution Master Plan by Mayor Gianni Alemanno is the first comprehensive economic initiative of its kind and, puts Rome at the forefront of initiatives being pursued across Europe to reach the 20-20-20 by 2020 EU mandate and achieve the long-term goal of realizing the Lisbon Strategy to make the EU the most competitive economy in the world.”