{"id":387937,"date":"2010-03-04T09:01:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T14:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greenenergyreporter.com\/?p=6748"},"modified":"2010-03-04T09:01:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T14:01:51","slug":"group-of-democratic-senators-want-to-halt-construction-of-stimulus-funded-wind-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/387937","title":{"rendered":"Group of Democratic Senators Want To Halt Construction of Stimulus-Funded Wind Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Sen<\/a><\/p>\n

Sen. Schumer says he's ready to cut stimulus funding for foreign wind farms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It turns out we were wrong. Last November <\/a>Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) shook the renewable energy world when he demanded that the Obama administration cut stimulus funding to what could be the first Chinese-owned U.S. wind farm<\/a>.\u00a0Schumer argued that the $1.5 billion, 600 megawatts project developed by China\u2019s A-Power Energy Group, should not get stimulus money because the turbines powering the facility would be manufactured in China.<\/span><\/p>\n

The storm quickly died down with assurance by A-Power<\/a> and its U.S. partners, including Austin, Texas-based Cielo Wind Power, that a minimum of 70 percent of\u00a0each turbine powering the project would be U.S.-made.<\/p>\n

In last month’s This Week in Green Energy<\/a>, GER was even bullish, confident that A-Power’s Texas project could be the first Chinese-owned U.S. wind farm and that Schumer’s stand was a distant headline-grabbing memory. Well, we were wrong.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, at a press conference in Washington, Senator Schumer and three other Senators — Senators Robert Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) — urged the Obama administration to cut stimulus funding to foreign-owned wind farms, at least until Congress can pass legislation to ensure that government money goes to projects that create long-term U.S. jobs, reports the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Schumer said the Obama administration had ignored the problem for too long. And it’s true that the Obama administration never seemed to take Schumer seriously. Back in November, on the side of an industry conference in Chicago, GER pressed Department of Energy Senior Adviser Matt Rogers<\/a>, about Schumer’s concern. \u00a0He swiped them aside, describing them as a “a non-issue.”<\/p>\n

On the A-Power Texas project, Schumer says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It is a no-brainer that stimulus funds should only go to projects that create jobs in the United States rather than overseas. These wind projects have a lot of merit, but the manufacturing should be happening here, not in China.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Since first coming out with his concerns about where stimulus cash\u00a0 was ending up, Schumer has cited a report published last October<\/a> by Russ Choma of\u00a0the American University\u2019s\u00a0Investigative Reporting Workshop that concluded that more than 80 percent of the first $1 billion in grants to wind energy companies went to foreign firms.<\/p>\n

Last month GER published Choma’s latest installment<\/a> in this ongoing investigative project.<\/p>\n

All along the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has disputed the Investigative Reporting Workshop\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

In a statement released yesterday shortly after Schumer’s press conference, the AWEA said:<\/p>\n

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At a time when the construction unemployment rate is nearly 25% and the manufacturing unemployment rate is 13%, this proposal would cost 50,000 American workers their jobs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Washington trade group added:<\/p>\n

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This proposal would torpedo one of the most successful job creation efforts of the Recovery Act, which has already preserved half of the 85,000 American jobs in the U.S. wind industry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Schumer proposal could roadblock one of the Obama administration\u2019s cornerstone policies.\u00a0The White House not only wants to grow the country’s renewable energy production, it also wants lead the renewable energy race pitting it again China<\/a> and has been willing to work with foreign companies to achieve these two goals.<\/p>\n

Image: Drum Major Institute, Flickr<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Schumer says he's ready to cut stimulus funding for foreign wind farms. It turns out we were wrong. Last November Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) shook the renewable energy world when he demanded that the Obama administration cut stimulus funding to what could be the first Chinese-owned U.S. wind farm.\u00a0Schumer argued that the $1.5 billion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2814,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2814"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}