Posts Tagged ‘manufacturing’
Wind Energy Hits its Stride, Manufacturing and Jobs Lag
The wind energy industry in the U.S. had a record-breaking year in 2009, installing 10,000 megawatts of new generating power, enough to serve 2.4 million homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association in its fourth quarter report released today. Yet the industry is still plagued by a lack of manufacturing investment, and job creation still lags. Here is a PDF of the report.
The AWEA credits the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as the impetus for the growth. During the last quarter the wind added 4000 megawatts of new capacity, together with new construction, operations and management jobs. Texas, the top wind-producing state, added 2292 megawatts in new wind capacity, more than twice that of Indiana, which ranked No. 2, with 905 megawatts added. Arizona opened its first utility scale wind project in 2009.
Yet wind power’s prospects for long-term growth are far from a sure bet. Total investment in manufacturing actually dropped compared to 2008; there were one-third fewer wind power manufacturing facilities in 2009 compared to the year before. This resulted in a net loss of manufacturing jobs, which was compounded by low orders and high inventory.
The weak manufacturing outlook caused AWEA CEO Denise Bode to sound a warning: “U.S. wind turbine manufacturing – the canary in the mine — is down compared to last year’s levels, and needs long-term policy certainty and market pull in order to grow. We need to set hard targets, in the form of a national Renewable Electricity Standard, in order to provide the necessary stability for manufacturers to expand their U.S. operations and to seize the historic opportunity we have today to build up a thriving renewable energy industry.”
In another development, Detroit Edison and Michigan-based Heritage Sustainable Energy have started commercial operation of a wind farm that will supply the utility’s customers with enough electricity to power about 2,000 homes. The wind farm is the first constructed and operated in Michigan under the state’s energy reform law that will have 10 percent of the utility’s power generation come from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2015. The wind farm was built after the utility signed a 20-year agreement to purchase wind power and renewable energy credits from Heritage.
