Layoffs Stall Green Job Growth

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Up one week, down the next, the industries that support the domestic manufacturing base for wind development in the U.S. are having difficulty sustaining any momentum. The latest casualties are the 500 Vestas jobs to be furloughed in Colorado after January 1 at its Windsor blade factory due to lagging turbine demand. Two weeks ago, it was 141 jobs eliminated by Gamesa at a wind blade plant in western Pennsylvania. In between those two announcements, the American Wind Energy Association drew attention last week to a gearbox manufacturing plant in Muncie, Indiana being built by Brevini USA that will employ 450 when it's completed next year. Vestas has committed to four manufacturing plants in Colorado with a combined price tag of $1 billion, and all scheduled to be open and operating in 2010.

But there's one nagging question as the country tries to shift away from fossil fuels and traditional manufacturing jobs, like in autos: how can the new green economy take flight if it's creating new jobs in some places while shedding existing ones elsewhere?

AWEA calculated that there were 85,000 direct jobs in wind manufacturing at the end of 2008, a growth of 35,000 jobs in that year. Figures for 2009 have yet to be calculated, but the association is expecting little movement up or down, according to Liz Salerno, its director of industry data and analysis. "We think that is quite a remarkable feat to hold onto the jobs we had, given what is going on in the rest of the economy," she says. Salerno shudders at what the jobs picture would look like without the Treasury Department cash grants from the stimulus bill that jump-started stalled projects this year.

An industry analyst expects some improvement next year, but more toward the second half of 2010. Massive investments were made in the supply chain in the U.S. and were ready to come online just when orders lagged due to the financial crisis, says Matt Kaplan of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Emerging Energy Research. "Remember that these are huge investments in the U.S., so it doesn't make sense for them, while turbine demand is low, to ramp up these facilities to full capacity," he says.

The current market will be soft well into 2010, but may turn around as projects face the end-of-2010 deadline to qualify for cash grants under the Treasury program that defrays 30 percent of development costs. There also appears to be slow improvement in the project pipeline currently, with some deals moving forward. What is not an issue is the financial condition of the European turbine manufacturers, but rather a general slowdown affecting the entire industry. "We've seen layoffs in Vestas, Gamesa, Suzlon, Acciona, Clipper, all tiers of manufacturers in the turbine sector," he adds.

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