Is Wind a Better Bet Than Solar?

If you are a foreign alternative energy company or a U.S. company, how do you find the confidence to build a manufacturing plant here when the subsidies could be pulled in a few years? In Europe, there have been stable wind subsidies for 20 years.

Also, the sheer scale of components in wind is very large compared to solar, and that trend is continuing. Wind markets, at least to some degree, have to be domestically supplied because it is difficult and expensive to ship overseas 50 to 60 foot segments of wind towers that can weigh 200,000 pounds.

On the other hand, you can fill solar modules into shipping containers and it's not that expensive. So from a jobs-creation perspective, wind has more opportunity because its components can't be exported cost effectively.

Right now we have approximately 90% of wind towers broken down into segments that are manufactured domestically. Approximately 50% to 75% of wind blades are made domestically. As other wind energy components become larger in size, the domestic manufacturing trend should remain hard to export.

-- Reported by Eric Rosenbaum in New York.

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