While President Obama promises to create 5 million green energy jobs, using billions in American tax money to subsidize renewable energy, new research shows most of that money is going overseas, creating more jobs in China, Germany and Japan than in the U.S.
“The purpose of those funds was to spur American innovation and help create American jobs and I think it is fair to say we are off track,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R- Tenn.).
Blackburn and others in Congress want to reintroduce legislation requiring a “Buy American” clause after a new analysis of green energy projects shows 79 percent of stimulus money for wind and solar projects went to overseas companies, according to the Investigative Reporting Workshop. A second study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows Chinese corporations taking over the solar panel market, jumping from a 3 percent share in California early in 2007 to 46 percent today.
The Chinese are “sweeping the table clean” in the photovoltaic market, according to one analyst who did not want to be named. “The Chinese have such low manufacturing costs, the U.S. may need protections like we have in farming.”
The numbers don’t surprise everyone. Roughly half of all wind turbines and two-thirds of all solar cells in the U.S. are manufactured overseas, according to the Energy Information Authority. Many established European manufacturers enjoy a competitive advantage, since the E.U. has long subsidized clean energy.
The purpose of the stimulus was to help level the playing field. U.S. subsidies were intended not just to put Americans back to work, but to help U.S. manufacturers transition to clean energy manufacturing. President Obama said as much in February:
“Make no mistake: Whether it is nuclear energy, or solar or wind energy, if we fail to invest in these technologies tomorrow, we’ll be importing those technologies instead of exporting. We will fall behind. Jobs will be produced overseas instead of here in the United States of America. That is not a future that I accept.”
And yet that is exactly what is happening, with the help of American stimulus money.
* Australian company Babcock and Brown received $178 million to install Japanese turbines on a Texas wind farm
* French Co. enXco received $69 million to install German turbines on an Indiana wind farm.
* Eurus Energy from Japan received $91 million to erect its towers in Texas.
No one paid much attention to these American subsidies until the Department of Energy granted $450 million to A-Power of China to install its turbines in Texas. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, asked Secretary Steven Chu to reject subsidies to companies that buy their components abroad, especially when renewable energy companies are closing plants, like Vestas in Colorado, and laying off workers in Pennsylvania, like Gamesa.
Blackburn agrees. “If you are going to create green jobs,” she says, “if you are going to create incentives, those should be American jobs and the American taxpayer needs to realize where those jobs are taking place.”
The situation is no better in solar, where increasingly Chinese manufacturers are getting U.S. contracts to undercut American suppliers.
According to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report in January, “Q4 2009 saw a dramatic rise in Chinese MG (megawatts) by application” with three of the four largest solar panel suppliers now from China. The other is from Taiwan.
“I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products – they’ll be consumers,” says Thomas Zarrella, of GT Solar. That is not to say any new energy installation doesn’t provide some American jobs.
Bill Henning of American Vision Solar in Los Angeles says the cheaper imports make solar more affordable. “People are able to spend more money in the economy because of what they are saving,” he says. “So solar, in and by itself, is doing a lot, outside of where it’s manufactured.” And while it is true American workers get jobs wiring solar panels or erecting wind towers, the real money is in manufacturing.
A new report from the Renewable Energy Policy Project finds that 70 percent to 75 percent of the total labor for any new wind or solar project is in manufacturing the component parts, not in marketing or sales. Rhetorically, that is something the president understands, but many say his policies do not support.
“Because I’m convinced that the country that leads in clean energy is also the country that leads in the global economy. And I want America to be that nation. I don’t want us to be second place, or third place or fourth place when it comes to the new energy technologies. I want us to be first.”