18 November '09
3:42 PM EST
No Comments
Cleantech
Funding

DOE’S Matt Rogers on China: They Intend to Win the Cleantech Race

Matt Rogers, a senior adviser at the Department of Energy who oversees stimulus invesments, said China was the emerging power the U.S. had to look out for in the cleantech race.

Speaking at the Midwest Alternative Energy Venture Forum, Rogers said:

They think about this as a global competition and they intend to win.

Rogers made the comments amidst growing concern on Capitol Hill about Chinese clean energy companies looking to grow their U.S. presence and benefiting from  government stimulus funds.

Rogers also took on the controversy over a Chinese-backed, $1.5 billion wind farm planned for Texas. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), had written to Rogers’ boss, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, urging him to deny stimulus funds for the project because China’s A-Power has been tapped to supply the turbines.

Rogers said DOE officials sent a note to Schumer telling him that the project has not yet applied for stimulus funds and he planned to meet with the senator tomorrow. He added that the project would likely have strong American content:

The average wind project in the U.S. today has between 55 and 62 percent U.S. content, because that’s basically the parts we make in the U.S. Five years ago it was about 25-30 percent U.S. content, so we’ve almost doubled U.S. renewables content… and we’re really going to move it back up to 70-90 percent U.S. content.

There’s a lot of smoke and drang and all that sort of stuff and it’s basically a non-issue.

Tagged: , , , , ,
17 November '09
9:50 AM EST
No Comments
Wind

Take That Chuck Schumer, Part 2: A-Power Announces Plan to Build Wind Turbine Plant in the U.S.

China’s A-Power Energy Group and equity group U.S. Renewable Energy Group have announced plans to build a wind turbine production and assembly plant in the United States capable of producing 1,100 MW of turbines annually.

The announcement comes two weeks after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) demanded the Obama administration deny stimulus funding to a $1.5 billion 600 MW wind farm in Texas because the turbines would be supplied by A-Power.

It is also the second announcement that a Chinese manufacturer would set up shop in the United States in as many days. Suntech Power Holdings officials said on Sunday that they plan to build a plant in Arizona that will have an initial capacity of 30 MW of PV panel.

That deal, however, is much further along. The new wind turbine venture does specify a site for the plant and is contingent on government approvals and further deals between the parties.

The statement from Renewable Energy Group Managing Partner Ed Cunningham is right out of the green stimulus playbook. Read More »

Tagged: ,
30 October '09
10:15 AM EDT
No Comments
Wind

Chinese and U.S. Developers Team Up to Build 600 MW Texas Wind Farm

The Shenyang Power Group (SPG), a Chinese company, announced a joint venture with a group of U.S. companies to develop a $1.5 billion, 600 megawatts wind farm in West Texas that will use Chinese-made wind turbines.

The project will largely be financed by tapping credit facilities from Chinese banks as well as cash grants administered by the U.S. Treasury Department. The news is yet another indication of the growing clout of the Chinese cleantech sector, which, backed by a robust domestic market, is now looking to expand abroad and in particular in the U.S.

Supplying the wind turbines is an outfit called A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese supplier of distributed power generation systems that only recently entered the wind turbine business.

A look at A-Power’s Website shows that it’s building its wind turbines with technology licensed from European and U.S. companies. Read More »

Tagged: , , , , , , , ,