Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Swartstraver. On today's show, powering the internet. As the

internet of things evolves and more and more devices are connected to the internet, what does that mean for our energy system?

What we have the power we need to bring the four billion people who don't have internet online?

And what does this mean for country's efforts to expand electricity? Joining me to discuss this is Nolmini Rubin,

vice president of Tetrotech, a global engineering and consulting company. Prior to that,

she worked on the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Nelmini, thanks for joining the show.

Thank you for having me.

So you've got this blog out

without energy. The internet is just a black hole, creating energy solutions for information

and communications technology. And we'll link to this blog in the show notes. It's on the Alliance for

Affordable Internet's website and your company is a member of that alliance. At a high level,

what is the relationship between the internet grid and the energy grid?

The internet is completely powered by energy.

So without energy, we cannot have the internet at all.

So they're completely linked.

If we don't have connectivity to electricity, we can simply not have connectivity to the internet.

And to what extent are the grids intertwined?

And when, as the internet developed, was it, you know, did we keep that in mind that we have this energy grid and that there's a lot of shared infrastructure?

Was that part of the plan or was the internet merely just using the electricity that was already

there and people didn't really foresee how quickly this would develop? It's the latter. People

haven't integrated internet and electricity enough. There's actually a technology that would allow you to put internet on electricity wires,

but it's not used commonly.

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