WCA November 2010

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2010 33
From theamericas
Steel
Chinese participation in a wind power
project in Texas has the blessing of the
United Steelworkers of America
An agreement between the United Steelworkers of America
and two Chinese clean energy companies apparently has
deflected potential controversy over the use of economic
stimulus money from Washington to subsidise foreign
companies.
The deal, announced 6th August, requires that all major
components of the machinery for a $1.5 billion wind farm in
Texas be made in the United States.
The elements to be sourced domestically include steel for
the wind towers, enclosures for working parts atop the
towers, and reinforcing bars for the bases. So also will
the blades be American-made, the union and the Chinese
companies said. Blades, or vanes, for wind turbines are not
fabricated of steel but are often made by steel workers.
The Chinese parties to the agreement with the labour
union are Shenyang Power Group, known as SPG, and
that company’s partly-owned subsidiary A-Power Energy
Generation Systems. They have formed a joint venture with
the American investment firm US Renewable Energy Group
to build the wind farm in West Texas.
When, in the fall of 2009, word spread that millions of
dollars in federal stimulus grants and loan guarantees for
clean energy initiatives might flow to the project, members
of Congress requested the Obama administration to deny
federal aid.
“Their chief worry was that the turbines would be
manufactured in Shenyang, China, rather than in the United
States,” wrote Matthew L Wald, a Washington reporter for
the New York Times. “[This] announcement seems likely to
allay some of those objections.” (“Wind Farm Deal Assures
Bigger US Role.” 6th August)
President Leo W Gerard of the United Steelworkers said
his union had been prepared to bring anti-dumping actions
against Chinese manufacturers of steel imported for wind
machines, as it has in the past over steel imports for other
uses. Now, the Chinese participants in the 615-megawatt
Texas project anticipate buying 50,000 tons of steel from
unionised American mills. They will also work to develop
an American supply chain for wind machine manufacture
beyond the Texas project, the union said.
The ❖ ❖ Times ’s Mr Wald called attention to the expanding
globalisation of the wind machine industry, which utilises
parts made in various countries. Robert E Gramlich,
policy director at the American Wind Energy Assn, told
him that the “big heavy stuff” – ie towers and blades –
were generally most likely to be locally sourced; and that
smaller, higher-value components were more likely to
be imported. In the case of the Texas project, however,
the gear box, a high-value component, was always
to be manufactured by General Electric Co (Fairfield,
Connecticut).
Elsewhere in renewable energy . . .
Another project for making blades for wind turbines, this
one Canadian, is headed up by Siemens Canada which
expects to commission a plant for the purpose by late 2011,
in time for the 2012 construction season. Together with its
American partner Pattern Energy, Siemens will supply the
blades for a massive wind and solar power development in
the province of Ontario led by Samsung C&T Corp, of South
Korea. As reported by John Spears in the Toronto Star
(10th August), in return for $437 million in subsidies over
25 years, Samsung and Korea Electric Power Co signed an
agreement with Ontario that requires them to build a total of
four plants there to make equipment for the generation of
wind and solar energy.
The big blades are intended for turbines that can generate
2.3 megawatts of power. The wind farms where they will be
installed will qualify for the province’s “feed-in tariff” rates,
paying on-shore wind farms 13.5 cents a kilowatt hour for
power. (When Mr Spears wrote, market prices had averaged
about 4c/kWh since 1st January, although high summertime
demand pushed rates briefly into the 12-cent range.)
As with the Chinese-US project in Texas, the sourcing of
steel was apparently a factor in the Canadian negotiations.
Siemens senior vice president Bill Smith told the Star that
the steel towers that support the blades will be made in
Ontario. While Samsung will be the key customer at first,
taking 300 or more blades, the South Korean company will
not have an exclusive on output. The new plant, Mr Smith
said, “would supply blades or turbines to whoever wanted
to install them.”
A Senate hopeful from a Rust Belt state
takes a contrarian view of US tariffs on
Chinese steel imports
The United Steelworkers of America also figured in coverage
of a special election being run in West Virginia to fill the two
years of the late Senator Robert C Byrd’s unexpired term.
Mr Byrd, a Democrat, was one of the Senate’s strongest
supporters of tariffs on steel imports from China.
Hoping to succeed him is John Raese, a Republican, who
has said he believes tariffs placed on steel imports during
the George W Bush administration have played a major role
in creating economic problems in the United States.
It was Sen Byrd’s conviction that the output of American
steel makers could not compete with imports from
countries with low wages, weak environmental regulations,
and government subsidies for steel mills. Mr Raese urges
concern for American manufacturers of steel products. In
a telephone interview with the Charleston (West Virginia)
Gazette-Mail, he said, “When you have a tariff on all
imported steel, that allows domestic steel companies to
raise their costs to just below that tariff figure. Then we all
have to raise our prices.”
These views on steel tariffs, expressed at a midsummer
civic meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia, drew the ire of
the president of the United Steelworkers local. Calling
Mr Raese’s comments “outrageous,” Mark Glyptis said that
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Photographer: Marty