Obama to open taps on clean tech stimulus funds

The Obama administration's campaign to accelerate the roll out of clean technologies and build support for a US climate bill will step up a gear today when both president Obama and vice president Joe Biden announce major new funding for low-carbon technologies.

Obama will travel to Arcadia in Florida today where, according to Reuters, he will announce the largest investment of economic stimulus funds in clean technologies to date, with the award of new funding for utilities investing in the development of smart-grid systems.

The president, who will also tour the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, could announce the award of up to $3.4bn (£2.07bn) through the government's Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, with hundreds of firms reportedly in the running for nearly 100 grants of between $20m and $200m.

The funding is expected to result in a flurry of investment for the emerging smart-grid sector, with the Department of Energy (DoE) requiring that government funding is matched by investment from the private sector.

Obama is expected to argue that the development of smart-grid systems is essential to the wider roll out of renewable energy systems, and key to efforts to curb carbon emissions and reduce US reliance on oil imports.

Meanwhile, vice president Biden is expected to announce that a closed General Motors plant in his home state of Delaware is to be converted to manufacture plug-in electric hybrids by green-car startup Fisker Automotive.

The dual announcement comes just a day after the DoE announced that it has awarded $151m to 37 advanced research projects, ranging from technologies to manage intermittent power flows from renewable energy sources to biochemistry projects designed to use bacteria to produce automotive fuel.

The DoE said that the funding was the first tranche of up to $400m to be awarded under the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) programme. It added that the funding was split between small businesses, academic institutions and larger firms, with the aim of driving the development of technically and commercially viable clean-energy technologies.

"After World War II, America was the unrivalled leader in basic and applied sciences. It was this leadership that led to enormous technological advances," said energy secretary Steven Chu. "ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the US to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution."