New energy is really expensive. The most commercially viable option is to reduce your own energy use, which, as stated by the Obama Administration, is the cleanest fastest easiest, cheapest way to generate renewable energy. In order to reduce your energy consumption, you need to know precisely where and when you're using it.

For example, most people don't realize that when they do a Google search they are consuming energy—both directly by using the computer and indirectly because Google’s data center is processing the search—and there's a carbon footprint associated with that search. A recent report indicated that just two Google searches are equivalent to boiling water for a cup of tea.

The most commercial potential exists for energy saving rather than energy generating technology, to reduce consumption and cost. One of the technologies that will have the most impact is the “Internet of Things.” With smart, interconnected equipment, things tell you precisely and in real time how much energy they're consuming and allow you to control that equipment from anywhere in the world. An example of the energy implications of the “Internet of Things” is lowering your thermostat or turning off your computer at your home, coordinated from your hotel room halfway around the world.

By making "dumb" objects smart, fine granularity energy consumption information gives you the opportunity to take steps and reduce it—fundamentally based on the principal that you can't manage what you can't measure. Back to our data center example, data centers are expected to consume 4 percent of the total country's energy by 2011 according to the US Department of Energy. If we can shrink that to a much smaller percentage there will be less of an energy burden on our country, and our wallets.