We waste a significant amount of electricity due to an outdated and inefficient electric grid in the United States.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

Conservatives love arguing that it’s pointless to battle global warming when countries like China are growing and adding pumping more carbon into the atmosphere. In one sense they have a point, but what if China invests heavily in renewable energy? Also, while doing so, what if they take the lead in green manufacturing and technology?

As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower.

Through a combination of carrots and sticks, Beijing is starting to change how this country generates energy. Although coal remains the biggest source of energy and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases.

While the House of Representatives approved a requirement last week that American utilities generate more of their power from renewable sources of energy, and the Senate will consider similar proposals over the summer, China imposed such a requirement almost two years ago.

This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up all over the country.

This oasis town deep in the Gobi Desert along the famed Silk Road and the surrounding wilderness of beige sand dunes and vast gravel wastelands has become a center of China’s drive to lead the world in wind and solar energy.

A series of projects is under construction on the nearly lifeless plateau to the southeast of Dunhuang, including one of six immense wind power projects now being built around China, each with the capacity of more than 16 large coal-fired power plants.

Each of the six projects “totally dwarfs anything else, anywhere else in the world,” said Steve Sawyer, the secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group in Brussels.

In one sense, this is not a zero-sum game. We want China to make this progress, and it’s encouraging to see these investments in a country that until recently was becoming an environmental nightmare. Also, green technology will spread quickly around the world, and many green jobs involving installation and maintenance cannot be outsourced.

That said, it’s pathetic to see the Chinese move boldly in this area while we have one political party in the United States that resists investments in green energy for all sorts of reasons.