3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
This compares to the United States which generates 56 percent of its output into GDP. A more
productive infrastructure which builds on a greater local capacity would likely increase this ratio
and provide the economy with a greater level of resilience for any number of reasons. Second,
Luxembourg has a Gross Fixed Capital Formation of €9.4 billion per year.
If this is a reasonable proxy for annual investment in capital stock (or infrastructure), and if we
anticipate an almost three-fold expansion of the economy by 2050, one can quickly imagine
that 50 years or more may be needed to fully transition the economy from a Second Industrial
Revolution mode to a Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure. Hence, the need to quickly
aggregate both supply and demand, and to accelerate the redirection of capital away from the
old and into the new. This brings us then to a key idea: an emerging coalescence around the
establishment of a Luxembourg Sustainable Development Finance Platform (LSDFP). This
proposal was first referenced by the Luxembourg Financial Working Group. 207
The LSDFP complements the three key ideas set forth by the TIR Consulting Team: (a) the need
to build up a more productive capacity in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg through the more
efficient use of energy and other resources 208 ; (b) the implementation of an adapted
Sustainable Energy Finance (SEF) model to augment via bond issuers and private financial
sector actors, the scale of phased-in capital that is required to transition Luxembourg into a
Third Industrial Revolution economy 209 ; (c) the deployment of a new set of blockchain
technologies that can reinvigorate the national investment capacity to continue the steady
march toward a higher level of economic performance. 210 Financial education and financial
literacy have also been identified as key enablers and priorities going forward. Moreoever, both
the Financial Working Group and the TIR Consulting Team have also advanced a series of
complementary financial strategies that can further build out the contribution of the financial
community.
In the discussion that follows, these key elements are presented as a series of five
complementary proposals that might accelerate the economic performation of Luxembourg.
Proposal 1 focuses on the Luxembourg Sustainable Development Finance Platform as
envisioned by the Working Group on Finance, accompanied by the Sustainable Energy Finance
model. Proposal 2 describes the potential development and deployment of the Blockchain
207 See generally, TIR – Pillar “Finance” – Document de restitution (2 May 2016).
208 Laitner, John A. “Skip”, Exploring the Economic Benefits of the TIR Innovation Scenarios (19 May 2016); see also
Robert Wilhite Kathleen Gaffney, and Tiffany Chow, Navigant Consulting, Inc., The Third Industrial Revolution for
Energy - Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (19 May 2016).
209 Byrne, John and Job Taminiau, Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment (FREE), Assessment and
Application of Sustainable Energy Financing as Infrastructure Investment in Luxembourg: A “Sustainable Energy
Finance” (SEF) Strategy (19 May 2016).
210 Willard, Rik and Michael Casey, The Agentic Group, The Blockchain Opportunity in Luxembourg (May 19, 2016).
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