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.
