We waste a significant amount of electricity due to an outdated and inefficient electric grid in the United States. Thus, this investment is significant.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will announce $3.4 billion in government grants to help build a “smart” electric grid that will save consumers money on their utility bills, reduce blackouts and carry power supplies generated by solar and wind energy, the White House said.

It marks the largest award made in a single day from the $787 billion stimulus package approved by Congress, and will create tens of thousands of jobs while upgrading the U.S. electric grid, according to administration officials.

The grants, which range from $400,000 to $200 million, will go to 100 companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners in 49 states.

This investment is only the first step, and part of the criteria here was the speed with which companies could implement the changes, as this money comes from the stimulus package. For example, the grants will not be used to build new power lines, but improve the capabilities of the electrical system. The funds will be used for a variety of projects, including approximately “18 million smart meters that will help consumers manage energy use in their homes, 700 automated substations to make it faster for utilities to restore power knocked out by storms and 200,000 smart transformers that allow power companies to replace units before they fail, thus avoiding outages.” Companies had to bid and compete for the funds, and the winning companies secured an additional $4.7 billion in private money to match their government grants, resulting in a total of $8.1 billion in total investment in the smart grid.

The smart meters are critical, as they encourage consumers to use electricity more efficiently. If you can see on your meter that running the dishwasher costs you more during the day, you will consider running it at night instead when rates are cheaper. If you’re costs are spiking during the day, you might realize that you can open the windows instead of running the air conditioner.

Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham don’t agree on much. The above photo from FOX News Sunday shows the two Senators sparring in the fall of 2008.

The two Senators, however, have teamed up to write a compelling Op-Ed in today’s New York Times in which they argue for a bi-partisan approach to addressing climate change legislation. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about this issue, and it could offer some real momentum for an issue that many believe will be stalled in the Senate.

If Lindsey Graham is on board, one would think that he could bring along more Republicans. One reason Graham is on board, and there’s hope to bring along more Republicans, is the emphasis on using nuclear power as one of the options. The left needs to become pragmatic over nuclear power, and realize that it offers the key to obtaining broad support.

Kerry and Graham also signal that a compromise is needed on domestic drilling. The clean energy revolution will not happen over-night, and if we need to rely in the short term on some fossil fuels, it’s better for the U.S. economy to use more domestic oil. We certainly shouldn’t subsidize it, but in the context of a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, permitting more domestic production makes tons of sense, particularly given the current economic crisis.

Hopefully, this can be the starting point for a grand bargain on energy.

Read this article about the battle between natural gas and solar power in Colorado and you’ll get a great idea of the complexity surrounding the clean energy issue. Over time, this stuff will get sorted out, and the subsidies for clean energy clearly have a positive impact. That said, there’s legitimate concern that all the competing interests will create a nightmare set of regulations once Congress gets through with the new climate bill.

This presents another compelling case for a simple carbon tax over cap-and-trade legislation.

George Soros is getting serious about climate change.

Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and create an organization to advise policy makers on environmental issues.

Soros, the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management LLC, announced the investment in Copenhagen yesterday at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate. The group is an international association made up of 430 newspapers from 150 countries.

“I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments,” said Soros in an e-mailed message. “They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”

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Soros has said he prefers a greenhouse-gas tax because carbon emission-trading systems, which are used in Europe, can be manipulated by investors.

It will be interesting to see if the advocacy by Soros helps to tip the debate in the U.S. towards a carbon tax as opposed to cap-and-trade.

This is a very sad story from The New York Times. It’s stunning that we still have issues with contaminated drinking water in the United States. On the other hand, with so many corporate interests undermining common sense regulation, it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. Remember the all the issues with financial regulation? It seems like we’re having the same problems here.

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

Hopefully the EPA in the Obama administration will push for real enforcement.

The Plain Dealer has a misleading headline regarding plug-in hybrids: “Plug-in hybrids could prove costly for utility companies.” That’s true only if we approach the issue of charging plug-in hybrids without using our heads, but as the article points out there are very logical ways to address this potential problem.

Scott Moore, vice president of transmission for American Electric Power, said that issue could be solved either by smart chargers on the cars or by smart charging plugs in houses. If drivers plugged in their cars at 6 p.m., but the car didn’t start charging until 2 a.m., the system could probably handle the demand.

Even better would be if the driver plugged his car into an Internet-connected charger that could switch on and off as power was available. On a blustery day, when wind farms were producing extra power, cars could charge in the early evening. On a more typical day, charging could happen late at night.

“You’d get about 80 percent of the benefit from just changing the time of charging until early morning,” Moore said. “You’d get an extra 20 percent benefit from letting (utility companies) figure out when to charge you.”

The solution is obvious, so at least they got that part right. It also highlights the need for a smart grid and smart meters connected to the Internet so we can see how we use electricity and how we can make minor modifications to our behavior, or set clear guidelines, so that we use energy when it’s least expensive.

The Obama administration has set aside $8 billion in the stimulus package for high-speed rail projects, and states need to submit their applications by October 2, 2009. Some have estimated that the aggregate dollar amount of the applications will exceed $100 billion, so competition is fierce.

The Plain Dealer is reporting on the progress Ohio is making, and the enormous time and effort being devoted by government agencies and private individuals.

Ohio passenger rail advocates are moving at breakneck speed to fulfill requirements to apply for up to $450 million in federal stimulus money to provide service from Cleveland to Cincinnati.

They are seeking public input through a Web site, toll-free phone number and meetings across the state as part of an environmental assessment study that is required as part of the funding application, due by Oct. 2 to the Federal Rail Commission.

The study, which usually takes about a year, will be compiled in less than three months.

“We are really compressing this process and a lot of it is driven by the tight timeline,” said Stu Nicholson, spokesman for the Ohio Rail Development Commission, an independent agency of the Ohio Department of Transportation. “But I am not overstating this at all to say the level of interest from virtually every community large and small is very high.”

Under Ohio’s 3C plan, three trains would travel daily from Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati in each direction along the 260-mile corridor. The service, with 79-mph trains, would begin in 2011 with minimal stops. It would eventually add more stops and become part of a 110-mph high-speed network to connect west to Chicago and east to New York.

The trains would be operated by Amtrak on freight tracks owned by CSX and Norfolk Southern. More than 6 million people live within 15 miles of the route, said ODOT spokesman Scott Varner.

The stimulus money will be down-payment on an even more aggressive federal push for high-speed rail, and as evidenced by the activity in Ohio, states are serious about moving forward. The impact on the environment and on economic development can be significant. Hopefully budget issues won’t impact the next wave of high-speed rail funding.

China’s growth has been impressive, but until now things like pollution and dissent have not been roadblocks to growth. The Chinese government has done as it pleased with little resistance.

Those days might be over, as BusinessWeek reports.

China has some of the most polluted cities in the world, a consequence of the country’s rapid economic development. More than 320 million people in China drink unsafe water, according to Greenpeace China. The country’s Environmental Protection Administration considers 45% of the rivers and waterways it monitors to be unsuitable for human contact, says Greenpeace.

Now, after years of silent suffering from the effects of filthy air and dirty water, many Chinese are saying they’ve had enough. And in some cases, their protests are turning violent.

This may be one of the issues that cracks the Chinese government’s grip on power. The situation in China is dire, and the people are awakening to the seriousness of the problem. This is good for China and the rest of the world.

As reported earlier, the Chinese are making huge investments in wind and solar, and this poses a threat to the US from a manufacturing point of view, but naturally these investments are a positive step for the entire world and the green economy. But this isn’t enough to address the pollution crisis in China. China needs to enact and enforce real regulations preventing companies from polluting the environment. They need to change the manufacturing culture. Until that happens, they will be facing ever-increasing protests and possible social unrest that can destabilize the regime.

Get ready for a new buzzword. I understood the idea of the “smart grid,” but take that a step further and you end up with smart infrastructure. The New York Times has the goods.

A similar pattern is emerging today, experts say, for what is being called smart infrastructure — more efficient and environmentally friendlier systems for managing, among other things, commuter traffic, food distribution, electric grids and waterways. This time, the crucial technological ingredients include low-cost sensors and clever software for analytics and visualization, as well as computing firepower.

Wireless sensors can now collect and transmit information from almost any object — for instance, roads, food crates, utility lines and water pipes. And the improved software helps interpret the huge flow of information, so raw data becomes useful knowledge to monitor and optimize transport and other complex systems. The efficiency payoff, experts say, should translate into big reductions in energy used, greenhouse gases emitted and natural resources consumed.

The implications are staggering. First, this sounds like a great business, and companies like IBM, Cisco and GE are all over this. I’m also guessing that storage companies like EMC have a bright future here as well.

More importantly, we’re entering a new era where waste and inefficiencies are no longer accepted. The culture has changed. Also, business has changed. In today’s world, the costs associated with waste cannot be ignored.

We have a down-payment on a new smart grid with the stimulus package passed earlier this year. Hopefully, the concept of smart infrastructure will influence the way the government spends money of all projects going forward. Now that we have an administration that believes in science, the prospects are much brighter.

The New York Times has a cool new story about the development of algae for use as a biofuel. The article explains how a new start-up company co-founded by a Colorado State University professor recently introduced a strain of algae that loves carbon dioxide into a water tank next to a natural gas processing plant.

The story is interesting as it also focuses on the involvement of the Southern Utes Indian community as an investor in the project. But the most interesting element involves the interrelated efforts to develop alternative energy.

One of the keys to new projects is eliminating waste and taking advantage of heat and other byproducts of one energy-generating process and using these byproducts in another process built next to the first process. Here’s a summary of how this will work regarding this algae process.

Solix’s facility project is next to the natural gas processing plant for access to the carbon dioxide waste stream, which will be used to nourish the algae — a kind of biological recycling of carbon dioxide before its discharge into the atmosphere as the vegetable fuel is burned.

The plant also produces waste heat, which could be used to warm the algae beds in winter. In addition, the high desert plateau of southwest Colorado is one of the sunniest spots in the nation, providing solar radiation that accelerates algae growth.

Central to Solix’s business model, Dr. Willson said, is the hope that power plants and other factories now venting carbon dioxide will allow the company to build an algae farm next to their carbon dioxide vent pipes. A plant could sell the oil or biodiesel, and Solix would earn its return by being a part owner-operator, or by licensing the technology.

Conservation and efficiency are the new buzzwords in the renewable energy field (among many). Energy should never go to waste, and many projects that were once too difficult to make commercially viable can have a new life when one examines how to exploit byproducts from well-established processes. The possibilities are endless.