U.S. Companies File Complaint Over China’s Steel Subsidies

The following was gleaned from an article in today's New York Times.  Those counting on a lot of new Green jobs in a new Green economy may want to take note.  Many of those Green jobs are not ending up in the U.S.

The New York Times

Friday, December 30, 2011

U.S. Companies File Complaint Over China’s Steel Subsidies

WASHINGTON — Four domestic companies that make most of the steel towers for wind turbines in the United States filed a trade complaint against China and Vietnam on Thursday, seeking tariffs in the range of 60 percent.

The allegations are much like the ones that solar panel manufacturers made in a similar case filed against Chinese manufacturers in October, namely that government subsidies were allowing foreign manufacturers to sell below cost in the United States, damaging the domestic industry.

The American wind industry is also subsidized, mostly through a production tax credit, but by all accounts the scale of Chinese subsidies is far larger.

The companies bringing the complaint buy high-quality plate steel and cut it so that it forms a slightly conical shape when it is rolled into a cylinder. They weld the long seam in the rolled structures, called cans, and then stack the cans to form taller units, each with a flange at top and bottom. The units are shipped to wind farms where they are bolted together to form a tower. Towers can reach 300 feet and weigh 350 tons, and the largest ones sell in the range of $600,000, a price largely determined by the price of steel.

The industry installed about 2,900 towers in 2010 and probably more in 2011.

Imports of towers from Vietnam and China roughly doubled in 2011, according to Alan H. Price, a lawyer at the firm that filed the case, Wiley Rein, which also filed the solar panel case. At one of the companies he represents, Katana Summit, an executive said that imports had been taking market share for the last several years and now had about half the market.

The complaint seeks duties of more than 64 percent on Chinese imports, and more than 59 percent for Vietnamese imports.

The case was filed by the Wind Tower Trade Coalition — comprising Trinity Structural Towers, DMI Industries, Katana Summit and Broadwind Energy — at the Commerce Department, which has 20 days to decide whether to initiate an investigation. In addition, another government agency, the International Trade Commission, will hold a hearing in about three weeks to decide whether there is reasonable indication that the domestic industry is suffering from the imports or is under threat from them. It should reach a preliminary determination in 45 days. If the commission says there is an indication of a threat, the Commerce Department would reach a preliminary determination within six months on whether the two countries are guilty of dumping. At that point, duties could be imposed.

A final determination would take about a year, if the wind coalition wins all the earlier rounds.

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In Solar Power, India Begins Living Up to Its Own Ambitions

The following was gleaned from an article with the above title in the December 29, 2011 New York Times.

I like this article, in part, because it provides cost data which are lacking in so many Renewable Energy articles.  Even though costs are stated in Indian rupees, conversions are provided.

For reference, a good, round, average "rule of thumb" cost for electricity in the United States is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.  In the U.S., we burn a lot of coal and coal is cheap.

In Solar Power, India Begins Living Up to Its Own Ambitions

KHADODA, India — Solar power is a clean energy source. But in this arid part of northwest India it can also be a dusty one.

Every five days or so, field hands with long-handled dust mops wipe down each of the 36,000 solar panels at a 63-acre installation operated by Azure Power.

Two years ago, Indian policy makers said that by the year 2020 they would drastically increase the nation’s use of solar power from virtually nothing to 20,000 megawatts — enough electricity to power the equivalent of up to 15 million modern American homes during daylight hours when the panels are at their most productive.

Dozens of developers like Azure, because of aggressive government subsidies and a large drop in the global price of solar panels, are covering India’s northwestern plains with gleaming solar panels. So far, India uses only about 140 megawatts, including 10 megawatts used by the Azure installation, which can provide enough power to serve a town of 50,000 people, according to the company.

“Prices came down and suddenly things were possible that didn’t seem possible,” said Tobias Engelmeier, managing director of Bridge to India, a research and consulting firm based in New Delhi. Chinese manufacturers like Suntech Power and Yingli Green Energy helped drive the drop in solar panel costs. The firms increased production of the panels and cut costs this year by about 30 percent to 40 percent, to less than $1 a watt.

This month, the government held its second auction to determine the price at which its state-owned power trading company — NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam — would buy solar-generated electricity for the national grid. The average winning bid was 8.77 rupees (16.5 cents) per kilowatt-hour.

That is about twice the price of coal-generated power, but it was about 27 percent lower than the winning bids at the auction held a year ago. Germany, the world’s biggest solar-power user, pays about 17.94 euro cents (23 American cents) per kilowatt-hour.

India still significantly lags behind European countries in the use of solar. Germany, for example, had 17,000 megawatts of solar power capacity at the end of 2010. But India, which gets more than 300 days of sunlight a year, is a more suitable place to generate solar power

Most Indian power plants are fueled by coal and generate electricity at about 4 rupees (7.5 cents) per kilowatt-hour — less than half of solar’s cost now. In this month’s auction, the recent winning bids were comparable to what India’s industrial and commercial users pay for electricity — from 8 to 10 rupees. And solar’s costs are competitive with power plants and back-up generators that burn petroleum-based fuels, whose electricity costs about 10 rupees per kilowatt-hour.

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