It depends. China leads the globe in green stimulus spending, the research firm reports. But those funds are being channeled through key state-run industries, meaning parties who want any of these funds will have to partner up with these gatekeepers.

In the U.S., on the other hand, stimulus spending has been spread out amongst many more companies and partners under a wider variety of forms, such as matching grants, tax credits and loans and loan guarantees. Key money-granting agencies like the Department of Energy have been struggling to avoid the pitfalls of spending it unwisely, which puts ever-more pressure on stimulus-seekers to prove the value of their technologies or business models.

All in all, world governments have given out $94.8 billion in green stimulus funds to date, with about $74.5 billion awarded in the last year, the report found. That leaves about $99.5 billion yet to be spent, though that’s spread unevenly around the globe. While the United States has spent only 36 percent of $65.1 billion in green stimulus, China has spent 69 percent of the $46.1 billion tallied by the report, and Japan has spent 80 percent of $10.4 billion, for example.

Indeed, figures vary on the point of just how much the U.S. has spent on green stimulus. According to a November report by the U.K.’s Guardian, the Obama Administration has released less than half the $90 billion it dedicated to stimulus for green projects including renewable energy, energy efficiency, advanced batteries and electric vehicles and public transportation.

But the Department of Energy has different figures for its share of stimulus funds dedicated to green projects. As of its latest weekly report on stimulus spending, dated March 4, the DOE says it had awarded $33.09 billion in stimulus funds, and of that amount, $12.38 billion had been outlaid, or sent out the door. (To learn more about DOE’s green stimulus efforts, come to our Green:Net 2011 conference in April.)

That’s a significant speeding up of DOE green stimulus spending from last year, when a series of reports found that several high-profile programs hadn’t given out much money at all. In August 2010, the DOE’s Office of the Inspector General found that only 8.4 percent of the $3.2 billion in state energy efficiency block grants had been disbursed, creating only 2,300 jobs, for example.

The DOE has been making great efforts to speed the green stimulus flow. As of September, DOE had obligated all but $1 billion of $32.7 billion in green stimulus grants and contracts, Matt Rogers, former DOE stimulus program chief, said recently at an energy industry event in Washington, D.C.

While the DOE had only spent $7.3 billion of that amount at that time, Rogers said it intended to spend about $1 billion a month over the next 18 months to catch up. As for the widely differing figures on just how much stimulus funding falls under the “green” category, that’s accounted for by differing definitions of “green” — does it include high-speed rail, for instance? — as well as which government agency is doing the awarding.

The DOE has struggled with doing due diligence on grant and loan-seeking projects in the face of an unprecedented flow of green stimulus cash. Even so, problems can arise. An October report from DOE’s inspector general found problems with poor performance and overpaying contractors doing low-income home weatherization projects in the Chicago area paid for by a $5 billion DOE grant program.

In December, the Center for Public Integrity reported that funds from the stimulus package for clean power and energy efficiency were issued with “sweeping exemptions” from basic environmental oversight. And in February, a federal judge allowed a lawsuit against the DOE’s clean energy grant program to continue, which could have wider ramifications on the practice of giving grants in lieu of tax credits for big solar power projects.

The DOE’s massive loan guarantee program for renewable power projects has also come under scrutiny. In November, a leaked White House memo revealed concerns in the Obama Administration about the slow pace of loan guarantees for renewable energy projects. At the same time, loan guarantees to struggling companies like thin-film solar startup Solyndra have led some lawmakers to question DOE’s decision to give it a $535 million loan guarantee.

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Image courtesy of Steve Wampler via Creative Commons license.

While I fully support the stimulus package’s investments into energy innovation, I’m not sure the metrics are doing exactly what the White House is purporting, which is trying to “prove” that the stimulus is working with data. I think it’s still waaay too early to do that. However, I think in general, the stimulus funds have been allocated in a smart manner, despite the innate difficulties of bureaucrats trying to pick winners and losers, and some potential missteps.

Biden also didn’t mention the fact that a significant chunk of the funds haven’t been handed over yet, and the deadline to allocate the money is looming on Sept. 30, 2010 (it’s use it or lose it by that time). A couple of weeks ago, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said that even though the DOE had increased its staff to try to get all the funds out of the door, “two of the Department’s major projects have less than 50 percent of their Recovery Act funds obligated. And, as of the date of this review [Aug. 4], none of the programs has obligated 100 percent of their respective funding.” I think Friedman’s report is one of the reasons for the press conference today.

In Biden’s speech, he spoke about battery plants, solar thermal in the Mojave Desert, and the smart grid, and specifically called out a meeting with the CEO of LED chip maker Cree. Here are the metrics that are supposed to prove the stimulus funds are being spent well. The U.S. is now on track (thanks to the stimulus) to:

• Cut the cost of solar power in half by 2015. In addition, the report says the cost of power from rooftop solar panels will drop from $0.21 per kWh in 2009 to $0.10 per kWh in 2015, and as low as $0.06 per kWh by 2030. The cost of utility-scale solar projects will drop from $0.13 per kWh today to $0.06 in 2015.

• Cut the cost of batteries for electric vehicles by 70 percent between 2009 and 2015. This means that an all-electric vehicle will fall from $33,000 to $10,000, and the cost of typical plug-in hybrid batteries will drop from $13,000 to $4,000. The weight of a typical electric-vehicle battery is forecast to decrease by 33 percent, from 333 kilograms to 222 kilograms, by 2015. The lighter battery means a lighter car, which means less energy is needed to power the car. A typical battery is expected to last 14 years in 2015: more than three times as long as the current 4-year lifetime.

• Double U.S. renewable energy generation capacity and U.S. renewable manufacturing capacity by 2012. Stimulus funds will double renewable energy capacity from the 28.8 GW of solar, wind, and geothermal generation that has been installed as of 2008, to 57.6 GW by the end of 2011, and double renewable energy manufacturing capacity from an annual output of 6 GW of renewable equipment (like wind turbines or solar panels) to 12 GW by the end of 2011. This will increase the U.S. share of global manufacturing of solar photovoltaic modules from 8 percent of all production, to 14 percent by 2012.

• Green Jobs. The real metric that critics of the Obama administration will look at is how many jobs were created, given the stimulus is supposed to stimulate the economy. Steven Chu said these above breakthroughs are helping to create “tens of thousands of new jobs,” and helping the U.S. to “continue as a leader in the global economy.”

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This week, Tanfield — which makes aerial work platforms and electric vehicles for the commercial sector — reported a return to growth in its electric vehicle division, driven mainly by “new markets outside of the UK.” This comes amid declining revenue and shrinking cash reserves for a company hit hard by the credit crunch and global slump in the construction sector. Tanfield notes that it’s “reviewing alternative ways to fund the continuing cash outflow.” If and when a new plan goes through for Smith U.S. to buy Tanfield’s British electric vehicle unit, Smith Electric Vehicles UK (SEV UK), and launch an initial public offering, Tanfield expects to generate cash from the deal and get a kick-start to improve its finances.

Tanfield’s operating losses amounted to £9.8 million [$15.2 million USD) in the six months ended June 30, down from £11 million in the same period in 2009. “Reflecting the adverse trading conditions in the period,” writes Tanfield, its net cash balance dropped £3.2 million to £2.2 million during the first half of this year.

President Obama at Smith U.S. factory in Kansas City, Mo.

Back in March, Tanfield agreed not to consider any bids other than Smith’s for 120 days, and Hansel told us at the time that he expected the deal to close in that window, by July at the latest. But when July rolled around, a deal had yet to be struck and talks continued. On July 9, the day after President Obama visited Smith’s factory in Kansas City (to tout how investments from the stimulus package have helped to create jobs, speed economic recovery and spur growth in the clean energy sector), Tanfield announced that it had agreed to extend the exclusivity period by another 60 days.

The extra time appears to have been fruitful. Last week, Tanfield notified shareholders of a non-binding agreement to consolidate Smith U.S. and SEV UK and retain a stake in the combined venture. Hansel told us in an email that timing has yet to be determined, but the revised agreement calls for Smith U.S. to buy an agreement under which Tanfield licenses its electric vehicle technology to Smith for a 1-percent-per-vehicle royalty fee, as well as all the assets of SEV UK and “the intellectual property necessary to allow the combined businesses to operate globally.”

Tanfield, meanwhile, has high hopes for the U.S. commercial electric vehicle market. “It is very likely that future growth in the U.S. will be significantly more rapid than in the European market,” the company noted in its earnings statement Wednesday, “due to number of Federal and state initiatives to drive demand and application.”

For example, DOE-funded subsidies for Smith customers who participate in a demonstration program and allow data collection, explained Hansel, help to lower one of the major barriers to adoption: payback time. “The post-grant pricing simply shortens the time period it takes customers to receive a return on their initial investments,” he said.

To help fund a major expansion and meet demand in a market where incentives are accelerating growth, Smith U.S. has its eye on the public markets. The company’s offer to Tanfield earlier this year stipulated that Tanfield would get a certain share of the new, combined Smith Electric Vehicles if it managed to go public before September 2015.

But while Hansel told us on Thursday that Smith has not locked into a particular course of action (he said the company “continues to review all its options for future financing and growth”), Tanfield’s recent notice to shareholders reveals that Smith U.S. is considering a public offering on the NASDAQ, possibly as early as the first half of 2011. So as Hansel told us in March, the company may gun for that IPO “sooner rather than later.”

Blink commercial charger

Will a pair of simple shapes — a circle and a square — become the iconic symbol of smart charging for electric vehicles, the way a box topped with a pitched roof is instantly recognized as a house? That’s the hope of electric vehicle charging infrastructure developer ECOtality and industrial design firm Frog Design. On Tuesday at the Plug-in 2010 Conference in San Jose, Calif., ECOtality unveiled what it’s calling Blink smart charging stations for electric vehicles, including designs for residential and commercial installations.

Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., ECOtality has already installed about 6,000 charging stations around the country for vehicles like warehouse forklifts and ground-support vehicles at airports, ECOtality CEO Jonathan Read told me in an interview that the Blink chargers have been designed from the ground up to link with communication networks and smart grid services. In an interview recently at Frog’s offices in San Francisco, ECOtality CEO Jonathan Read described the Blink stations as a “Swiss army knife of telecommunication,” designed to connect with local area networks, Wi-Fi, Zigbee and cell phone networks. Most of the Blink software and networking technology, he said, has been developed in-house.

With more emphasis on function, simplicity and opportunities for multiple revenue streams than the kind of pizzazz seen in General Electric’s recently unveiled WattStation, Frog and ECOtality may be onto something. Paul Bradley, Frog’s executive creative designer, said that he drew inspiration from familiar forms ranging from a computer power button and touch screen to a utilitarian hose rack for the Blink units, and the team worked with mock-ups of gas stations to see how they might fit in the real world.

The first Blink charging stations will be installed as part of the so-called EV Project, an infrastructure buildout in 16 cities supported by $114.8 million in stimulus grant funds from the Department of Energy. By around this time next year, ECOtality is slated to install 15,000 charge points through that project, with installations beginning in October or November and reaching the half-way point in January, said Read.

ECOtality plans to allow one-off charging, and offer subscription plans for tiered access to the Blink network, ranging from $25-$55 per month depending on the driver and vehicle technology (all-electric cars have bigger battery packs than plug-in hybrids, for example, and will need to draw more juice). Read said “some adjustment” should be expected for these pricing schemes between now and late 2012, similar to the way cell phone plans have changed over time to provide options for unlimited minutes.

Blink residential charger

The company hopes its Blink network will generate revenue beyond subscriptions. Read said ECOtality is now “working actively” with big box stores and national chains, with the idea that Blink stations could serve as retailers’ and brands’ first point of contact with electric car-driving shoppers. ECOtality also hopes to sell screen-time to media and advertising companies, and form a partnership with a cell phone provider. The company is currently in talks with at least five automakers in hopes of “working with them while they’re interested in selling chargers” — during the very early days of plug-in vehicle sales.

Long term, however, Read commented that it’s “not lucrative being a first or second tier provider” to the major automakers. Utilities, said Read, will be “the ultimate customer.” ECOtaility aims to use the smarts in its Blink stations to manage electricity demand from plug-in vehicles in a way that minimizes stress on the power grid, and Read said utilities would potentially pay a fee to access data about when and how people charge.

ECOtality is one of a growing number of companies hoping to provide smart charging infrastructure for the upcoming generation of plug-in vehicles. Read commented that we’ll see “a plethora of people who will make chargers and sell them,” but he argued that Blink will offer something different. Coulomb Technologies, a competitor as well as a partner in the DOE-backed EV Project, offers charge points that Read described as “extremely practical,” and “really designed for city streets.” The problem with that, he said, is states and cities don’t have the money to support a real boom. He dismissed GE’s WattStation as little more than “really pretty,” and Better Place as “the mythical competitor.”

With Blink, ECOtality hopes to spur viral adoption of charge points in the private sector by meeting retailers’ needs, making equipment convenient for consumers, and providing tools for users to connect with a social network of electric car drivers.

At the end of the day, however, these stations need to provide a basic function: deliver electricity. To make that as easy as possible, Bradley’s team at Frog, with clear guidance from ECOtality, wrestled with elements like the weight and length of the cord. For the residential unit, they opted to separate the “smart part” of the gear from the actual plug, so the user interface can be installed at a comfortable height and convenient location in the garage, for example, and the section that holds the cord can go close to the car’s charging port.

Uncle Sam may already be on board at this point, but only time will tell if ECOtality can win over retailers and utilities, and if consumers will flock to electric cars in large enough numbers to sustain the smart charging business long term.

Images courtesy of ECOtality

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Job figures (“tens of thousands,” “hundreds”) are somewhat vague — given that this is a progress report on spending that’s meant to stimulate economic growth, coming from an administration that has been touting the green jobs created through Recovery Act investments. But the 8-page document does provide a snapshot of where these funds are going and what kind of changes the feds are hoping they’ll bring about. You can read the full report here, and check out our digit-by-digit highlights below.

1: Number of times that DOE mentions Ford and LG Chem in its report.

2: The number of factories producing advanced vehicle batteries in the U.S. in 2009. (Also the number of times that DOE mentions battery maker A123 Systems, Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and Nissan in its report.)

4: The number of new battery plants that the DOE expects to be operational by year’s end.

5: Number of times that DOE mentions General Motors in its report.

9: The number of new battery plants slated to open in the U.S. in total with Recovery Act funds.

14: Number of years that the DOE expects electric vehicle batteries to last by 2015 (if recharged 1.5 times per week), compared to an estimated 4-year lifespan for batteries produced in 2009.

20: Percentage of the world’s production capacity for advanced vehicle batteries that will reside in the U.S. by 2012 as a result of Recovery Act investments. The DOE expects this to grow to 40 percent by 2015.

21: The number of plants helped along by stimulus grants that are expected to make components for batteries or electric vehicles.

26: Number of battery and component plants that have started construction, either breaking ground on new facilities or installing new equipment at an existing factory.

30: Number of factories that the DOE expects to come online producing advanced vehicle batteries in the U.S. by 2012.

33: Percentage by which the DOE expects the typical weight of an electric vehicle battery to drop by 2015 compared to 2009 batteries, thanks to improved energy density.

>50: Percentage of oil consumed in the U.S. that’s imported.

95: Percentage of power used to move cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes in the U.S. that comes from oil.

<500: The number of electric vehicle charging locations available in the U.S. prior to stimulus investments.

4,000: The DOE’s estimate of the dollar cost for a battery delivering 40 miles of electric range (in a plug-in hybrid, for example) in 2015, compared to an estimated $6,700 in 2013 and more than $13,000 in 2009.

5,000: The number of charging stations that Coulomb Technologies plans to deploy at residential and commercial locations in nine metro areas using a $15 million stimulus grant.

10,000: The DOE’s estimate of the dollar cost for the battery needed to give an electric car 100 miles of range by the end of 2015, compared to an estimated $16,000 in 2013 and $33,000 in 2009.

20,000+: The number of new electric vehicle charging stations expected to be available in the U.S. at residential, commercial and public locations by December 2013.

80 million: Number of additional square meters of separator materials for lithium-ion batteries that Celgard will be able to produce at its plant in North Carolina each year following completion of a factory expansion supported with a $49.2 million DOE grant.

5 billion: Amount in dollars that the DOE is investing in electric vehicle batteries, components, charging infrastructure and other efforts to “electrify America’s transportation sector” through the Recovery Act and the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program.

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The name of the game seems to be heavyweight manufacturers (read: big employers, keeping with the jobs theme that Obama emphasized at Smith last week).

On Thursday Obama is scheduled to attend the groundbreaking of lithium-ion cell maker Compact Power’s stimulus-backed, $303 million plant in Holland, Mich., which is expected to employ 450 people within three years. General Motors has tapped Compact Power, a Michigan subsidiary of South Korea’s LG Chem, to supply the batteries for its upcoming plug-in Chevy Volt.

Meanwhile, in Maryland, the executive director of the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, Ed Montgomery, will on Thursday be heading to a GM plant awarded a $105 million stimulus grant to start cranking out electric motors, which the automaker expects to create about 200 jobs.

On Friday, Department of Energy chief Steven Chu is heading to Delphi’s facility in Kokomo, Ind. Delphi scored an $89.3 million grant under the Recovery Act to help boost the company’s manufacturing and engineering capacity for electric vehicles.

That’s not all. Other administration officials, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will also be stumping for the administration’s electric vehicle investments this week. And on the other side of the politics equation, the Electrification Coalition (made up of Nissan, NRG Energy, PG&E, A123 Systems, GridPoint, and others) has ramped up lobbying efforts with the launch of a new ad campaign promoting the Electric Vehicle Deployment Act, which would direct billions of dollars over five years for a small number of “deployment communities” to set up infrastructure for vehicle recharging.

Amid this swarm of activity, however, the overarching issue for electric vehicle and energy storage players ranging from Silicon Valley to the Beltway is whether, when, and how the Senate will proceed with crafting stalled climate and energy legislation, which could shape the market for emission-reducing technologies more than anything else in the next few years — and which was notably absent from Obama’s speech at Smith Electric Vehicles last week.

Image courtesy of dcJohn’s photostream.

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Today’s awards mark the last of the ARPA-E grants funded under the Recovery Act. According the DOE, it has now awarded $349 million in grants to 117 projects in three rounds since last year. Created in 2007, the ARPA-E program was left unfunded until the 2009 stimulus package.

Each of the projects in this latest round falls into one of three categories, covering modular devices for storing energy for the power grid, components for improving the efficiency and cost of power conversion and switching across the electrical grid, and systems for cooling buildings efficiently with less reliance on refrigerants.

Click to view the full list of project selections in this ARPA-E round (PDF download).

Companies scoring funds in today’s round, which drew 529 concept papers in the initial application process, include flywheel developer Beacon Power , battery maker Fluidic Energy, flow battery companies General Atomics and Primus Power, and fuel cell developer Proton Energy, as well as lighting tech giant Cree, Boeing, GE Global Research and GeneSic Semiconductor.

Toyota will be working with the University of Arkansas, Oak Ridge National Lab and Cree on a project led by Arkansas Power Electronics International that bagged one of the largest grants, for nearly $4 million, to develop low-cost, highly efficient power electronics for rapid charging of plug-in hybrid vehicles.

More than a third (36 percent) of the projects are being headed up by universities, including MIT and Virginia Tech, while large businesses are leading about a quarter (24 percent). National labs and non-profits are leading 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively, of the projects in this round. You can download the full list of awards and check out the technical project descriptions here.

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Licensing the RoxioNow platform will allow Sears to sell or rent digital versions of movies and TV shows on the same day and date that DVDs are available for purchase in retail stores. As part of its entry into the digital video market, the retailer will launch services based on the RoxioNow platform later this year in its Sears and Kmart stores.

The two companies say they will work together to get the service embedded on a number of consumer electronics devices. The RoxioNow platform is already embedded on a number of consumer electronics devices, including LG Blu-ray players and TiVo DVRs. In addition to being able to purchase content on these connected devices, the RoxioNow service enables end users to store those purchases in a “digital locker” that will allow them to access that content at a later time on a different device.

Sears is just one of many retailers Sonic has signed up to use its RoxioNow platform; both Best Buy and Blockbuster are leveraging Sonic’s digital video service for their own white-label digital video services. But Sonic — and its retail partners — face stiff competition from Wal-mart, which acquired RoxioNow competitor Vudu earlier this year.

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The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, notes in a new report that the success of this “difficult, multiyear effort” will hinge on a host of other factors, including the availability of state and federal funds “to build and operate systems that go far beyond the funds provided by the Recovery Act,” the ability of states to work together on interstate lines, and the cooperation of private railroads.

The challenge of building infrastructure across state lines has cropped up for greentech efforts beyond the transportation sector. For example, despite widespread recognition that the U.S. power grid is overdue for an upgrade, transmission lines are in many cases being built at a slow pace partly because of issues with conflicting state regulations.

According to the GAO, 37 states and the District of Columbia submitted 259 applications requesting a total of around $57 billion under the $8 billion in stimulus funds made available for new passenger rail corridors or improvements to existing rail service. Earlier this year the Federal Railroad Administration announced plans to award the $8 billion to 62 projects in 23 states, plus the District of Columbia.

Hardware

• Thickness: iPhone 9.3 mm; EVO 12.7 mm
• Display size: iPhone 3.5 in.; EVO 4.3 in.
• Display resolution: iPhone 960×640; EVO 800×480
• Rear camera: iPhone 5 MP; EVO 8 MP
• HD video recording: iPhone yes; EVO yes
• HDMI out: iPhone no; EVO yes
• Front camera: iPhone yes; EVO yes
• Kickstand: iPhone no; EVO yes
• Dual microphones (noise cancellation): iPhone yes; EVO no

Software

• OS: iOS 4; Android 2.1 (2.2 promised soon)
• Navigation: iPhone no; EVO yes (two free apps)
• Video chat: iPhone Wi-Fi only; EVO Wi-fi/3G/4G (two apps)
• Multitasking: iPhone limited; EVO full
• Carrier support (U.S.): iPhone AT&T; EVO Sprint
• Mobile broadband support: iPhone 3G; EVO 3G/4G (WiMAX)
• OS updates: iPhone via iTunes; EVO OTA
• Hotspot: iPhone none; EVO mobile hotspot (carrier charge)
• Flash support: iPhone no; EVO Flash lite yes, Flash 10.1 coming

It may seem like I’ve stacked the deck against the iPhone, and perhaps so. I do believe the iPhone 4 is a sweet smartphone, and it has the full Apple ecosystem behind it, which is powerful stuff. I also believe that the Sprint EVO 4G is the most advanced smartphone hardware available — that high-res iPhone screen aside –and it can certainly hold its own in this head-to-head comparison.

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