USA - Solar and wind energy companies bank on Obama’s green energy

China’s Suntech Power Holdings Co. has come a long way in the US since Roger Efird was the company’s sole employee in America in 2006, operating with a mobile phone and laptop in the basement of his Maryland home. The world’s largest producer of solar-power modules now has a San Francisco headquarters with 50 workers. Annual US sales have increased to about $140 million. And in a turnabout, Wuxi, China-based Suntech is searching for a site for a plant that would bring manufacturing jobs to the US.

Suntech’s growth reflects the promise foreign-based alternative energy companies see in the US, a market buoyed by financial incentives as well as a commitment in Washington to reduce reliance on overseas oil and combat global warming. “Most of the renewable energy industry worldwide believes that the US will within the next three years become the largest market in the world for solar,” Efird, president of Suntech America, said in an interview.

President Barack Obama is counting on growth in wind, solar and other alternative energy industries to create so-called green manufacturing jobs that will help lift the economy. Obama has set a goal of obtaining 25 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Less than two percent of energy in the US now comes from wind and less than one percent is generated from the sun, according to industry executives and the Solar Energy Industries Association in Washington.

That compares with 20 percent from wind in Denmark, seven percent in Germany and 12 percent in Spain, according to Roby Roberts, a senior vice president at Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world’s largest maker of wind turbines. “The US really hasn’t had a long-term energy strategy,” Roberts said in an interview. Vestas is “making a billion-dollar bet” that the US is now poised to become a world leader in wind energy, he said. The company plans $1 billion in capital investments in the US over two years.

Most of the larger makers of wind and solar power equipment in the US are based outside the country, said Jesse Pichel, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in New York who follows the renewable energy industry. “Foreign investment in the states has been increasing both for solar and wind, and most foreign companies are looking at putting up US plants or contracting with a US manufacturer,” he said.

The $787-billion economic rescue package Obama signed in February includes about $70 billion in spending for clean energy as well as $21 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy, said Daniel J. Weiss, head of the clean energy campaign at the Center for American Progress, a Washington policy group that advises Democrats. In addition, Congress in October approved $17 billion in alternative energy tax breaks as part of the $700-billion bank rescue plan. It extended for eight years an investment tax credit for solar projects.

The US has lagged behind countries in Europe and Asia in providing such incentives, giving some foreign companies a head start, Suntech’s Efird said. “A lot of non-US companies are well-capitalized and they have a lot more experience,” he said. “They’ve got a resume that looks pretty damn good.” Suntech says it will decide on a site for its US plant in the next several weeks. It will initially create about 100 manufacturing jobs. The company may then look to expand or open a second facility.

Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., another Chinese maker of solar-power modules, in the last three months opened offices in New York and San Francisco and is scouting for a US plant that would eventually create 300 manufacturing jobs, said Robert Petrina, managing director for Yingli in the U.S.

Suzlon Energy Ltd., India’s biggest maker of wind-turbine generators, has increased its US workforce to about 850 employees, including about 400 in manufacturing jobs, from 10 workers four years ago. In 2004, Suzlon built a plant to manufacture blades for wind turbines in Pipestone, Minnesota. It now has 22 wind farms in 13 states. “Politically, things have never been better for renewables in this country,” Andris Cukurs, chief executive officer of the US unit of Suzlon, said in an interview.

Vestas, the Randers, Denmark-based wind turbine company, opened its first US manufacturing plant in Colorado last year and is building three more factories in that state. By 2010, the company expects to have 2,500 manufacturing jobs in the US.

For more information please contact Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net