Note the interesting elision in Jeremy Rifkin’s argument here:

UN officials say that
instituting an early warning system will be taken up at a conference on
disaster reduction in Kobe, Japan, next week. But what’s likely to be
left unsaid is how to communicate with millions of individuals if
people have no access to electricity. Here’s what you won’t hear from
policy makers meeting in Kobe.

To
achieve universal global electrification by 2050 – a goal set by
international development agencies – would require bringing electricity
to 100 million additional people every year. Providing these additional
users with an average per capita electricity consumption equivalent to
what US consumers enjoyed in 1950 would require the creation of 10m
megawatts of new electricity capacity globally by 2050 – four times
today’s consumption.

The
US Electric Power Research Institute estimates that to reach this goal
a new 1,000 megawatt power plant would have to be brought on line every
48 hours for the next 50 years. And, it adds, 50% of the new capacity
would need to be carbon-free to comply with global environmental
requirements. The job would need a capital commitment of between $100bn
and $150bn per year.

Spot it?

A global warning system requires sensors around the world, monitoring and a communications system for the warnings. The first two have been estimated at around $2 million for the Indian Ocean (yes, horrifying number isn’t it, that so much death could have been avoided if the system that was being talked about had actually been in place at such a low cost). What do we need for the third? How about a few of those clockwork radios in every village on the planet?

This is connected with Rifkin’s calculation on the investment required to provide US levels of electricity consumption to everyone in what way?

Good, glad you spotted it, for it gives him the launch pad to go push his hydrogen economy thing.

(Please note, I’d be delighted if there was a mass rush to a hydrogen economy. It would make me a very rich man given my role in supplying one vital material for the best type and design of fuel cell. I’d rather it happened on the back of rather better logic though.)