Green U.S. Jobs to Come From China

First Solar has a manufacturing capacity of approximately 1.2 gigawatts, which is 40 times the capacity for the Suntech Phoenix plant and half of the projected U.S. market for 2012.

On Tuesday, a second Chinese company announced a move to America. Chinese wind turbine maker A-Power Energy Generation Systems(APWR Quote) and private equity firm U.S. Renewable Energy Group announced plans to build a wind turbine production plant somewhere in the U.S. next year.

The plant is expected to to be 320,000 square feet and produce 1,100 megawatts of wind energy annually. This is enough to power 330,000 homes. The facility is expected to employ approximately 1,000 American workers. The announced plan calls for 85% of the key wind turbine components to be sourced from U.S. manufacturers, further expanding the number of jobs created in the United States.

U.S. Renewable Energy Group is also partnering with another Chinese company, Shenyang Power Group, to build a planned wind farm in Texas that will cover approximately 36,000 acres. The wind farm will cost about $1.5 billion, with a capacity of 600 megawatts. A-Power is the designated turbine supplier for the wind farm. The Texas project will use about 50% of one year's production from A-Power's proposed turbine plant.

The corporate relationships are complex. A-Power is a shareholder in SPG. About 15% of the parts for A-Power's wind turbines consist of nacelles (gear boxes). These will be sourced outside the U.S., in China. They will be produced in Shenyang by a joint venture between GE Drivetrain Technologies, a unit of GE(GE Quote) and A-Power. So even the 15% of components not sourced in the U.S. have an American connection.

If these announcements are the first of many, the trade imbalance between the U.S. and China could be mitigated over time as more Chinese manufacturing is done in the U.S. This would not only reduce the import burden of bringing all Chinese finished goods into the country, it may also improve the export side of the trade balance as goods produced in the U.S. are sold into NAFTA and Latin America. And, of course, there is more U.S. labor content (and less Chinese labor) in the products made here. There is no question we need jobs.

It is likely that political pressure has accelerated these moves to more U.S. manufacturing, particularly in the case of the wind turbines. The Texas project had been criticized by Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) because it appeared to be proceeding with imported turbines. According to the New York Times, Schumer has welcomed the A-Power announcement.