After writing about American firms trying to break into China’s growing market for wind power, the paper today looks at Chinese companies trying to set up wind turbines in Minnesota and elsewhere in the U.S.:
While proponents say the Chinese manufacturers should be welcomed as an engine for creating more green jobs and speeding the adoption of renewable energy in this country, others see a threat to workers and profits in the still-embryonic American wind industry.
“We cannot sit idly by while China races to the forefront of clean energy production at the expense of U.S. manufacturing,” Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said during a debate this year over federal subsidies for wind energy.
Such sentiments help explain why Goldwind is putting a distinctly American face on its efforts — and is diligently highlighting plans to do more than simply import low-cost equipment from China.
“Goldwind was approaching this as, ‘We’re going to build an organic, North American organization,’ ” said Mr. Rowland, a Texas native and former engineer at the Boston-based wind farm developer First Wind. “So the opportunity to work with them — and with folks I’ve known for a long time — was really attractive.”
