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Jeff St. John | January 16, 2009 at 9:05 AM 2 Comments

Wind Power Joins Solar in Layoff Trend

First it was solar power companies laying off employees, and now wind power manufacturers are following suit. You can blame the economic downturn and credit crunch.

Earlier this month, Fargo, N.D.-based wind tower maker DMI Industries announced it would cut about 20 percent of its workforce at its North Dakota, Oklahoma and Ontario factories. The company said it now expects 2009 demand to be 25 percent to 35 percent lower than in 2008 — a sharp turnaround from expectations of an even better 2009 that led it to announce a big expansion in June.

Danish windmill blade maker LM Glasfiber is also feeling the crunch. Earlier this month it said it would cut 150 jobs at its Little Rock, Ark. factory, open less than a year. Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe told the Southwest Times Record newspaper that the economic downturn may lead to the scaling-back of other wind power manufacturing operations in the state, including those of Polymarin Composites USA Ltd., Wind Water Technology and Nordex USA Inc. 

And Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa is cutting about 180 of 720 workers at its Bucks County, Penn. plant, though the company said it might add workers at another turbine factory in Pennsylvania. Gamesa in October said it was temporarily halting production at its factories, citing slowing demand. 

That’s a common refrain in the wind power industry. With credit for large-scale projects drying up, wind farm developers are having more difficulty financing projects, turning a shortage of wind power equipment into a potential glut (see WInd Turbine Shortage Over? and Energy Financing Gone With the Wind). 

The economic headwinds have put a crunch on the plans of Florida-based U.S. wind power developer NextEra Energy Resources, formerly named FPL Energy (see FPL Cuts Wind Power Plans) and Texas oil billionaire and wind power evangelist T. Boone Pickens alike (see Knocking the Wind out of Pickens).

A similar story is playing out in the solar power industry, as the credit crunch and faltering economy have run head-on into an oversupply of solar panels and the polysilicon that is used to make them. Companies announcing layoffs in the past months include Suntech, Heliovolt, Optisolar, and reportedly SunEdison (see here, here, here and here). 

Both industries are appealing to Congress and President-elect Barack Obama for help, calling on a shift of federal tax credits for renewable energy projects to direct payments (see Industry Groups Call for Changes to Federal Incentives). The recent financial losses of Wall Street banks and other traditional backers of renewable energy projects have all but done away with their appetite for tax credits, renewable industry advocates say.

The so-called “refundable tax credits” don’t appear in a draft of an $825 billion stimulus bill being proposed by House Democrats and the incoming Obama administration that was released Thursday.

But the draft bill did include more than $20 billion for renewable energy tax cuts and a tax credit for research and development on energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy. That includes $8 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy power generation and transmission projects.

 

 

 

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Comments [2]

  • Alexander 01/18/09 1:43 PM

    Why wind energy is totally irrelevant and a complete waste of resources.

    1) Today humanity uses 426 Quads (426.000.000.000.000.000 BTU) of energy per year, of which the lion’s share comes from burning coal. (50 % worldwide, I don’t think that is a very bad estimate)
    That means: 213.000.000.000.000.000 / 20.000.000 (This is the amount of BTU one ton of coal produces when burned.) = 10.650.000.000 tons of coal are burned by humanity every year. With the result that we are pumping 10.650.000.000 x 2.86 (burning one ton of coal produces on average 2.86 tons of CO2 (plus a lot of other harmful stuff)) = 30.459.000.000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year.

    2) In ten years time humans will “need” or use 150 Quads more, thinking about the 3 billion people in the fast developing countries like China, India, Indonesia, Russia, etc., sitting on very big coal reserves!

    3) Global warming has set in and one of its major contributors is CO2. <b>Our days are counted if we don’t do anything about it!

    In my opinion it will be impossible to take coal out of the energy equation for the next 100 years, because all the renewables (now worldwide probably a energy contributor of less than 3 %) will not be able to off-set the amount of energy produced from coal and coal is the most available fossil fuel in those fast developing populous countries. Social pressures will force those fast developing countries to burn coal anyway (in a clean or dirty way). Wars have been fought for much sillier reasons. Therefore I am of the opinion that we have to develop the technology to burn coal in a clean and environmental friendly way, despite the extreme difficulties and extremely high costs. We cannot deprive humanity today of about 213 Quads (halve of its energy “needs” or usage) and we cannot go-on burning fossil fuels as we do today without destroying the global climate completely. Both ways (depriving or dirty burning) will bring war, death and mass extension for humans.

    I am of the opinion that all resources spend on Wind Energy is a waste of time and resources because it only tackles 4 % of our total energy problem in about 15 years time! ( 20 % of our total energy needs go to electricity generation and the politicians want 20 % of our electricity from Wind Power in about 10 to 15 years time. 20% of 20% = 4%)

    These resources could be used in a much better and effective way. By for instance:
    1. informing the general public about our real energy needs and explain how much we waste.

    2. Educating the general population how to save energy.

    3. Creating a real awareness about every bodies personal footprint and make it a national and global sport to make those individual footprints as small as possible, through schools and television programs (through EDUCATION)

    4. Going for the technology to burn coal (and other fossil fuels) as clean as possible. Humanity is going to burn them anyway.

    5. Plasma Fusion and Super Conductivity are the only technologies that really can get humanity out of its energy predicament. But it will take decades before we have those technologies available.

    For me Wind Power is as ridiculous as putting sails on 300.000 ton Super Tankers to off-set 4 % bunker oil by WIND Power. (And when you make some simple calculations you will see that this ridiculous idea is of the same order of magnitude as Wind Power!)

     Reply
  • home wind power 04/23/09 10:12 PM

    Quiet informative blog posting about wind power. Thanks for sharing information with us.

     Reply

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