Thanks to strong backing from the U.S. government, cleantech investing actually delivered a solid third quarter compared to the rest of the venture-backed sectors, including information technology and biotech. So what happens once the millions from the stimulus package dry up? The third-quarter wrap-up on Green IT from GigaOm Pro looks at what happened this quarter as stimulus funds rolled out, cleantech became the largest venture investment sector for the first time ever and talk of a bubble around the current darling of the space—smart grid—loomed large.

But the quarter wasn’t all about the smart grid. Battery companies — focused both on vehicles and consumer electronics — fared well, drawing attention from venture capitalists, the government and larger companies looking at batteries as a good business to be in. A123 Systems’ IPO was the big story in batteries this quarter, and it actually exceeded expectations. Lithium-ion batteries — the technology of choice for the upcoming generation of electric vehicles — have gained enough momentum to spark concerns about limited lithium resources.

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Electric vehicles need to be smarter than your average car. Their dependency on the electrical grid and the need to carefully manage the power going into and out of the batteries is prompting a revolution in vehicle information technology.

Existing communication and data networks (using IP) will enable vehicles to “smart charge,” delaying battery charging until favorable conditions on the grid (including the cost of energy) exist. According to a new GigaOm report, “IT and Networking Issues for the Electric Vehicle Market,” (subscription required) utilities alone will spend upwards of $800 million on IT to prepare the grid for vehicle charging.

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After health care reform, the next big fight in Washington will be about energy. Spending on health care is now about 18 percent of gross domestic product, while energy spending is about 10 percent — both in the trillions of dollars, which used to be a lot of money.

There are several driving factors contributing to this urgency for energy reform. Speedy spending on shovel-ready energy infrastructure can help jump-start our declining economy — $43 billion of stimulus spending has been earmarked for energy. Current world energy resources, especially oil, are getting expensive, running out, and in the hands of people who want to kill us. Catastrophic global warming is accelerating because of carbon dioxide released into Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal and oil, and it’s probably already too late to save life, as we know it. President Obama’s political honeymoon will soon be over, so it’s now or never.

Hurry! That’s what I hear anyway. Perhaps that’s more urgency than energy can stand.

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Here at Earth2Tech, Katie, Josie and the rest of the contributing writers do their best to provide you with a daily glimpse into the big news and trends in the world of cleantech. But we know it can sometimes be hard to see the forest for the trees: Smart grid investment and continuing woes for the U.S. automakers were clearly headline news this quarter, but from the dozens of product launches, funding announcements, and policy shenanigans, what’s worth revisiting? Over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), we’ve reviewed and compiled the important news and analysis of the last three months to help identify the big themes from second quarter 2009.

As the first federal stimulus funds began to make their way across the country, second quarter saw a slight thawing of investor pocketbooks when it came to cleantech.

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Back before the stimulus package or the Waxman-Markey bill, when no one was sure whether tax credits for renewable energy would be re-upped or allowed to fade away, U.S. mayors decided to adopt their own climate policy. In signing on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (a pact to strive for the greenhouse gas reductions targeted by the Kyoto Protocol), cities such as Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco sent a “we’ll do it on our own” statement in response to the lack of federal policy.

Since the launch of the agreement in 2005, some 500 more cities have signed on (and counting). And while some cities just signed the document and moved on, others have used the initiative to draft further innovative strategies that deliver meaningful reductions. The most effective strategies, by far, have been those that bring sustainability initiatives into the office of economic development and turn the city into an early adopter of “green” products and services. It’s exactly this sort of strategy that makes the following cities the best in the country to be a cleantech start-up. In a report, Living Cities Foundation interviewed sustainability directors and gathered data from city sustainability departments throughout the country. We’ve landed on the following seven as the best spots to start and grow a cleantech company (more interviews from the report here).

• San Jose
• Boston
• Austin
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• Portland
• Denver

First up: San Jose »

Image credit: arimoore.

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Today, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will hold a high-profile public hearing in San Francisco about the future of offshore oil drilling along America’s coastlines.

We have a choice. Invest in safe, renewable forms of ocean energy — including wind, wave, tidal and current power — that will help secure our future prosperity, create thousands of new jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Alternatively, we can continue to give tax breaks to oil companies that pollute our oceans and keep us locked in a carbon age.

The stakes are high. Oil companies are lining up to cash in on a Bush Administration proposal to offer petroleum development in 1.7 billion acres of formerly protected coastlines, including 136 million acres off the coast of California. This proposal represents a huge step backward. Our country has finally woken up to the need for a green energy future. Now we need to invest in the technology to make America the world leader in renewable energy.

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Subodh Nayar is the Chief Operations Officer of Powerline Telco

Empowering consumers with actionable intelligence about their power will not be the outcome of the deployment of smart meters. Rather, it will be exactly what the utilities intend for it to be: a cost-effective way to implement real-time pricing, demand side management and distribution system monitoring.

Why? The buyer and seller of electricity have opposite power consumption interests. We (buyers) want to have control over the total power we consume and independent confirmation we are getting what we pay for. Electric utilities (sellers) seek to maximize the profits from a business model that requires them to generate, transport and deliver a consistent quality of power — regardless of demand — in exchange for a guaranteed rate of return.

Electricity generated on the power grid isn’t stored, so the grid is engineered and operated to meet peak levels of demand, which might only exist for a few hours per month. Without control over demand, responding to demand spikes will cause the quality of power supplied to fluctuate outside accepted norms, i.e., delivered voltage lags outside the 5 percent acceptable quality band, or frequency fluctuates outside its 2 percent quality band. That can only change if demand can be controlled, so utilities want three things from smart meters:

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