Chu, a 60-year-old Nobel prize winning physicist from Stanford University, came to Washington with a mandate from the president to increase the nation's production of clean, renewable power, make the electric grid more intelligent and improve overall energy efficiency.

FORBES: Green Policy

The result could be better internet access for customers and, just possibly, a step towards the intelligent, self-healing power grid of tomorrow.

ECONOMIST: MONITOR

Wim Elfrink, a Dutchman living in India in charge of Cisco's booming global services business, talks about using the Internet to collapse the cost of U.S. medicine by employing Malaysian doctors or making China's urban electrical grid more efficient with an intelligent Cisco data network controlling the power.

FORBES: Page 2 of 2

In 2003, IBM co-founded the US-based GridWise Alliance that advocates for grid modernization, and in 2007, IBM formed the Global Intelligent Utility Network Coalition (GIUNC), a coalition of players in the energy and utilities market, which is helping accelerate the adoption and use of smart grid technologies and bringing digital intelligence to current systems.

ENGADGET: IBM announces Smarter Energy Research Institute, aims to improve energy grids (video)