TalkClimateChange

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh go the wind turbines that are popping up slowly across the world’s wind corridors.

With demand growing, new production facilities are being created, with all the green jobs that environmental lobbyists promised. The transition into the new green economy has began with the promise that we will all be stronger for it, especially economically.

So lets look at where the wind turbines are currently constructed, how long they have been operating, and where expansion plans lie for the major European and North American players. For several years I have been hearing from environmental groups, policy think tanks and politicians that a green economy will be a stronger economy and the employment opportunities will skyrocket as a result. It’s been seven years since I started researching this topic and I seem to be still waiting for all the green economy benefits, especially as I watch the world’s biggest economy fall into recession and drag the rest of the world with it.

I see the demands that renewable energy projects, which are the backbone of the economic prosperity projections, start to drag governments into huge budget deficits as they struggle to implement them. I also witness Governments that are requiring more and more taxes to be designed and applied to ease the haemorrhaging of funds required for these mandated levels of renewable power market share. So where is my prosperous new green economy that was promised in forward looking policy statements such as those from the IPCC and the Stern Report?

Wind Power Manufacturers

The top two power players in the wind turbine market are Vestas and General Electric. So lets look at where these manufacturers are actually producing the wind turbines, where they are creating jobs and where future expansion is planned.

Vestas (Denmark)- 2007 Financial Statements

Vestas has been selling Wind Turbines since 1979.

Vestas currently has the majority of it’s operations in Europe, but it’s plans for expansion are primarily focused on Asia and North America. This is evidenced by it’s 2007 opening of two new production facilities and the expansion of an existing factory in China. There was also a closure of a production facility in Australia. Plans are on the board for facilities in Spain and in the USA in 2008. They also announced two new facilities in China in November 2007.

Now it is important to understand what is being produced in each country; the majority of the facilities in Europe and the USA are making the blades and towers, relatively low technology parts that are costly to transport, while production for the nacelles, control systems and generators are being shifted to China. Of the 15,000 jobs, currently 12,000 are in Europe with the overall growth of 1,200 jobs last year occurring mostly in Asia.

Total Installed capacity Worldwide by Vestas is 4,502 Megawatts.

General Electric (USA) - 2007 Financial Statements

GE Energy has been selling Wind Turbines since 2002.

General Electric is a huge multi-national, and so deciphering the structure of their enterprise is difficult - the financial statements are an overview of total operations, so I have relied on other information sources to try and build a picture of turbine operations.

GE Energy’s stock press release states "wind turbine design, manufacturing and assembly facilities in Germany, Spain, China, Canada and the United States". The majority of the generators and nacelles are built in China, as far as I can tell, with other locations providing towers and blades. Employment numbers are only presented as a group for GE Energy, so looking at the 84,000 employee number and the various sub-groups I can estimate about 15, 000 jobs in the wind division worldwide.

Total Installed capacity Worldwide by GE is 7,600 Megawatts

To put the employment in perspective; job losses in the USA during February 2008 totaled 63,000.

So, the two biggest players manufacture the turbines, nacelles and control systems (the skilled manufacturing jobs) in China. They then build the blades and towers in the market area because they are too expensive to ship. They are assembled on-site by their technicians.

The Power Projects - That is where all the Jobs are!

Lets take a look at that. For example, a 30Mw installation (which is an average size project) began in 2005 and was completed in 2006 in Tabor, Alberta. The project employed 160 local people for 1 year during construction. These are people beyond the installation crews who have been working for years on these projects and represent the net of new jobs from the development, although no permanent local jobs were created.

The site itself has ZERO full-time employees - instead there is a team that manages and inspects this and three other wind farms. Service is provided by GE, the wind turbine manufacturer.

Surprised? I was. This is not unusual, however. As a wind power industry statement concerning another project in Canada called Huron Wind declares: "As a remote wind farm, Huron Wind does not have any direct employees. Maintenance on the turbines is provided by Vestas, the company that manufactured and installed the wind turbines."

Where is my Green Economy?

So there are some temporary jobs for short periods to deploy wind farms, although there is no employment after they are operational, except through the companies mentioned above, who employ few people in wind energy as a percentage of total world-wide operations. Now there is a supplier spill over, with certain components manufactured by sub-contractors, but it is limited as most items are custom components.

Yet I have heard people say that green power generation is the economic saviour of sustainable high paying local jobs. From the information I can obtain, there is limited potential here for any kind of sustainable employment of any magnitude.

Wind power is an excellent investment with zero ongoing employment and outsourced servicing, so once it is operational you can almost hook it up to the grid and walk away. No wonder it is becoming so popular! Other forms of energy production require on-site staff, operators, technicians and safety personnel. As wind power penetrates deeper into the market place and other power plants are retired the people adding to the unemployment rolls will grow not shrink.

So I ask again "Where is my Green Economy?"