Mirror, mirror, etc. What's the greenest technology of them all?

For the record, the earwig for this post came during a conference call that I was on a couple of weeks ago with tech-editor-turned-media consultant Sam Whitmore, who was kind enough to be curious about my coverage of green technology and green IT here at GreenTech Pastures plus my blogs about corporate sustainability over at our sister site, SmartPlanet.

While we were prepping for our conversation, Sam sent over some questions, not all of which we covered. I found one of them particularly intriguing. In short, someone wanted to know what I think is the greenest technology of them all. I'm not exactly a futurist, I just like asking questions and I happen to think that I have the coolest beat going. But I was disappointed that we never got to this topic, because I actually had an answer ready and it is this: Internet protocol.

Here's my rationale. If you think about just about any technology platform or play emerging today that COULD be deemed the greenest technology, it is clear that IP is a major underlying factor. Let's consider them individually:

• The smart grid (or as GE likes to call it, digital energy infrastructure): The most innovative projects happening here involve communicating information from someplace in the field (could be smart meters or home energy management systems that you manage remotely from your mobile device, but not necessarily) back into the management systems of the utility companies. At the heart of that communication are IP networking connections, both wired and wireless.
• Microgrids: Three technologies are really key for these to develop, including reliable energy generation sources (in my mind, preferrably renewable) along with massive battery storage technologies to counterbalance the intermittent nature of things like solar arrays and wind turbines. But when it comes to load-balancing and ensuring the information at the edge of the grid is more readily available, IP communications will again play a key role.
• Unified communications (aka collaboration): Many people that I talk to hold up web conferencing and videoconferencing as the glorious answer to cutting corporate travel footprints, because teams can meet "face to face" without getting on an airplane to meet at some mutual physical location. When the economy went south, this was one of the first things businesses did to cut their costs and (oh by the way) come up with a nice little side story about reducing their carbon footprints. What underlies telepresence applications? You've got it: IP networks.
• Renewable energy: It is generally well accepted that one thing holding back renewable energy investments is the challenge of integrating that capacity into the existing electric grid. Okay, so that's not strictly an IP challenge, but gaining visibility into that capacity definitely is one.
• e-readers: Definitely gave me pause for a few moments, because of the enormous potential savings in paper. But then I remembered how books usually get onto these devices now -- in many cases through wireless connectivity back to some Internet site.

I realize I am oversimplifying matters and I am a huge advocate of renewable energy technologies. But when forced to pick one thing, in my mind the Internet is the platform that will drive us toward a greener future. It will help us manage existing power consumption more efficiently in the form of smarter building automation systems, it will allow utilities to get smarter about moving away from peak generation into a system that more closely mirrors true energy demand, it will make for more closely managed supply chains that support more sustainable business processes, and it will allow for new forms of human collaboration that don't depend on carbon-heavy travel.