Robert Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet and founder of networking company 3Com, says that if green tech is ever to take off, it needs to learn the lessons of IT and the Internet. Metcalfe has turned his attention in recent years to green technology, and he's been giving a traveling slide show in which he highlights important lessons green technology needs to learn from the Internet and IT in general.

Fortune highlights Metcalfe's thoughts in a recent article. No shrinking violet, he portrays himself and other veterans of technology development as the saving grace of green technology. In the article he says:

The world should be happy that a bunch of Internet people like me have turned their attention to energy because that's how we are going to solve it. It is easier to teach energy to people who are steeped in the entrepreneurial culture than it is to teach entrepreneurial culture to people who know energy.

So what can green tech learn from the Internet and tech startups? Here's perhaps his biggest lesson, taken from the Fortune article:

Rather than building large, centralized power plants we should build lots of smaller, distributed sources of electricity. "This may be the Internet's killer lesson for energy: Go distributed!" Metcalfe says. Just as laptops replaced big mainframe computers, solar power on roofs or even small-scale nuclear plants can replace big, polluting coal plants.

He also says that just as the Internet was designed for two-way communications, and allows anyone to publish content, so should the electricity grid be a two-way system, and allow anyone to sell electricity as well as buy it.

And unlike most people, Metcalfe is hoping for a green speculative "bubble," because that means heavy investment in green technologies. This accelerates innovation, he says.

Finally, he says that Washington's main role in green technology should be to sponsor basic research, break up energy monopolies, and reduce capital gains taxes to spur more investment.