Statement From AWEA About Questionable ABC News Report

In response to last nights ABC News Report sponsored by American University, which featured accusations on how the Obama administration’s Recovery Act was used to ship jobs abroad, Liz Salerno, from the American Wind Energy Association, dishes up the real facts:

The article and report from ABC World News omitted some major facts: 100% of stimulus dollars going to the wind energy industry have gone to developers of wind projects constructed and operated in the U.S. Rather than shipping jobs overseas, as ABC asserted without a shred of evidence, building these projects created American construction, engineering, installation, transportation and operation & maintenance jobs, just when we needed them.

Repeat: Stimulus dollars aren’t going overseas. In fact, the stimulus dollars are leveraging billions of dollars from around the world and bringing investments INTO the U.S. economy, supporting jobs here. The U.S. wind industry was actually at risk to lose up to 40,000 jobs in early 2009, but it didn’t. The Recovery Act funding activated shovel-ready projects that would have otherwise been halted and kept our industry employed, for the most part, saving those 40,000 jobs.

wind power news ENC Statement From AWEA About Questionable ABC News Report

What AU and ABC are really riled up about is the fact the wind turbines being erected across the United States contain 53% American-made content, instead of 100%. The U.S. wind industry is trying to increase those numbers as fast as it can, encouraging foreign-based manufacturers to locate here and in just 4 short years we’ve added dozens of new manufacturing facilities. In 3 years, we went from 2 wind turbine manufacturers with facilities in the U.S. to 11 global turbine manufacturers with facilities in the U.S. and 4 additional turbine manufacturers with facilities announced. It takes time to ramp up, but the industry has been going at full-speed since 2005 and prior to the financial crisis, adding, expanding or announcing over 55 new manufacturing shops in 2008. Ignoring these facts, ABC said, blithely, “there is not much of a wind power industry in the United States.” Only 85,000 workers. Sigh.

Like the rest of the economy, the wind energy industry is currently struggling during the financial crisis to keep our manufacturing jobs and add more; we want the U.S. to be a global leader in wind manufacturing. As intended, the Recovery Act provided short term help to keep up our momentum. To make this happen, it is going to take a long-term and stable market, investments from expert companies from around the world and a backlog of product orders. This can’t happen overnight. Is ABC suggesting we do not want the billions of dollars invested in the U.S. economy just because the investments are from global companies? The wind power industry can bring new investment in the U.S. economy, from global and American companies alike and the end of the day, an American job is an American job, regardless of the name on a uniform.

Cape Wind gets Washington Post support

The Cape Wind drama continues; no surprise there. This week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took a tour of the site of the 420-MW offshore wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound. At the same time, the Interior Department’s Inspector General reported that some federal agencies felt they were being rushed to meet Salazar’s imposed March 1 deadline for a final review. Today the Washington Post carried an editorial suggesting that, because the project has been under review for nine years, “Mr Salazar should move Cape Wind along. ” That’s Sound advice.