Will Green Stimulus Money Go to China?
November 6, 2009
 Developers of a massive 36,000-acre wind farm in West Texas will be seeking federal stimulus money for the project which will include 240 2.5-megawatt wind turbines.
That should be good news for American workers. There’s just one hitch. The Wall Street Journal reports that all of the turbines will be built by Shenyang Power Group, a five-month-old alliance with operations in China.
Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing has sent a letter to President Obama emphasizing the need to develop domestic U.S. manufacturing to serve the renewable energy sector.
In part, the letter states: “I am deeply concerned that if not done properly, our efforts to rejuvenate our manufacturing base in this country could be unseated by subsidized imports from countries seeking to capitalize on new demand for clean energy products..”
“The project should create 2,800 jobs—of which 15 percent would be in the U.S. The rest would flow to China, where Shenyang employs 800 people,” says Paul.
The Wall Street Journal cites Elizabeth Salerno, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, who says that—in the first three quarters of 2009—there were 33 percent fewer announcements of U.S. turbine-factory expansions than in the comparable period of 2008.
In a posting on the Campaign for America’s Future blog, Natasha Chart proposes expanding wind energy development by passing more feed-in tariffs that set mandates for renewable sources and ‘buy America’ policies that require state and local governments to shop at home.
“If we are to bring our nation’s working families back from tough economic times,” says President Edwin D. Hill, “we need public policy that truly supports our domestic manufacturing base, not more outsourcing of our infrastructure.”
Photo used under a Creative Commons License from Flickr user mtlp
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