Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/business/energy-environment/02iht-green02.html

According to Tom Zeller Jr. writing in the November 1, 2009 New York Times:

News last week of the first major influx of Chinese capital and wind turbine manufacturing expertise into the renewable energy market in the United States — a 600-megawatt wind farm planned for the plains of west Texas — had many ... in a state of agitation.
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The details of the deal known so far: Contingent on financing from Chinese commercial banks — and no small measure of funding from the U.S. economic stimulus package — A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Nasdaq-listed company based in the Chinese industrial city of Shenyang, would provide 240 of its 2.5-megawatt wind turbines for a 36,000-acre, or 14,600-hectare, utility-scale wind farm in west Texas to be operated by Cielo Wind Power, a developer based in Austin.

The total cost of the project, which was brokered in part by the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, an American private equity company, was estimated at $1.5 billion....
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The group’s calculations last week put the number of American jobs at a little more than 300 — most of them temporary construction jobs, along with about 30 permanent positions once the wind farm is operating. Mr. McGarr told The Wall Street Journal that more than 2,000 Chinese jobs would be created by the deal.

That, along with the fact that the project was hoping to secure 30 percent, or $450 million, of its financing from U.S. stimulus funds, was enough to send tempers flaring.
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Part of the agitation almost certainly arises from China’s own reputation for green protectionism.

As Keith Bradsher wrote earlier this year in The New York Times, by establishing prohibitive quotas for homegrown solar and wind turbine equipment, and disqualifying bids from foreign companies on dubious grounds, the Chinese leadership has muscled out American and European manufacturers of clean energy seeking to gain a foothold in China’s burgeoning market for renewables.

As it happens, American officials made inroads in combating such trade barriers during a meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Hangzhou, China, last week. Among the outcomes of the meeting: China agreed to remove local-content requirements on wind turbines.
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[According to] Russ Choma, a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit investigative journalism project attached to the American University School of Communication in Washington ... 84 percent of the $1.05 billion in clean-energy grants distributed by the government since September 1 has gone to foreign renewable energy companies — specifically, wind companies. Through its American subsidiary, Iberdrola, a global manufacturer of wind turbines based in Spain, commanded most of that funding: $545 million. ... The program funded 11 projects that installed 982 turbines ...and 695 were built by foreign manufacturers.
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The dispensation of the $22 billion in stimulus funding that is supposed to go toward renewable energy projects has only just begun.

But China’s foray into the American wind power market comes alongside its dominance of the solar panel manufacturing industry, in which 95 percent of total output is exported to the United States and Europe.
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[Choma] points to a 2004 study from the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a research institute based in Washington. The institute found that every 1,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity had the potential to generate as many as 4,300 jobs, of which about 3,000 are created at the manufacturing level.

By Tom Zeller Jr.
FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/business/energy-environment/02iht-green02.html
The New York Times www.NYTimes.comj
Published: November 1, 2009