Here is what they are up to:
General Electric, the U.S.-based industrial giant and leading manufacturer of wind-power turbines, is scaling back efforts to expand its presence in the offshore wind power market.
The rationale: there is no meaningful offshore wind market to speak of – at least not yet.
Given slower-than-expected industry growth, the offshore market may not mature as rapidly as many wind boosters once believed.
In 2009, GE moved into the offshore market by acquiring Norway’s ScanWind, a developer of direct-drive turbines, based in the city of Trondheim.
GE is considering laying off about 40 employees in Norway as it scales-back its offshore operations there, according to reports in Recharge. The company has also suspended plans to construct a manufacturing facility in the United Kingdom indefinitely.
GE took a bunch of stimulus money for this, and now is scaling it back. GE’s Jeff Immelt is a member of… the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Punchy
But what does Andy Sullivan think of wind turbines?
Culture of Truth
If there’s no market for wind that really is bad news for our politicians.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the austerity wind is blowing.
sherifffruitfly
sweartagawd these things need to come with strings attached, to the tune of a commitment to DO the shit they’re taking the money for.
Yes, Francis, SOMEBODY has to be first in the field. If you’re taking taxpayer dollars for it, there’s absolutely NO reason why it shouldn’t be YOU.
campionrules
It’s just another sign of the malaise in green energy construction jobs. It’s a great thing to tout but for the majority of the country it’s a been a bust so far.
I work in a program that has seen literally hundreds of thousands of dollars pumped into training for unemployed workers for green sector jobs. The results of this training? the vast majority are still unemployed or working in another field.
I don’t know what the answer is – be it additional subsidies(though that runs the risk of cratering once those end – see Ethanol) or private sector development and implementation. What I do know is that the ‘green jobs revolution’ is still sputtering in neutral if not headed in reverse.
LGRooney
President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Backwards, it is pronounced Barry P, as in Barack P, and I am sure Beck will inform of the significance later today.
aisce
it’s almost as though general electric isn’t some sort of benevolent corporate citizen.
let us ponder deeply.
daryljfontaine
OT: NASA announces discovery of Kepler 16-b, first discovered circumbinary planet.
D
Southern Beale
As a defense contractor, no doubt GE finds our wars in the Middle East for more lucrative to the bottom line. As long as the American economy is sucking off the oil tit, GE’s bottom line looks stronger.
The Feds should ask for that stimulus money back. It’s happened before.
KG
No surprise that companies who have been producing energy via oil, gas, or coal aren’t all that interested in producing energy via new sources. Especially when they have a business with consumer capture… not like we can say, “no, I want my energy from this company over here.”
What I’d love to see here in California and much of the Southwest, actually, is the Legislature(s) passing a law that says if you build a new building, or engage in major improvements on an existing building, that the building include solar panels that can cover at least 20% of the energy needs of the building (with periodic increases in the percentage).
It’ll create green jobs (hell, it’ll create jobs period), it’ll reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and hopefully reduce energy costs over the long term.
Of course, it’s also too logical, so no chance that it’ll happen.
Mr Furious
Obama is worse than Bush, and GE is his Halliburton / Blackwater…
[/firebag]
Culture of Truth
GE is a person just like you so be nice
Cris (without an H)
Shouldn’t Brick Oven Bill be arriving shortly to lecture us about how wrong we are all about wind power?
El Cid
Mentioning that he’s an adviser to the Administration in some critical sounding way makes you an emoprogger.
West of the Cascades
If we cut GE’s taxes (and Immelt’s personal taxes) immediately, they would instantly create more jobs.
What, you said that GE didn’t pay any taxes last year?
Obviously we need massive subsidies to GE for research and development, offset by increasing taxes on that 49% of the population which currently doesn’t pay a cent in taxes. Freeloaders.
cleek
JC, you might have checked first to see if all of GE’s stimulus money went to this one 40-person outfit in Norway. or, if it all went to the deepwater wind division. or if it all went to windpower. or…
hint: it didn’t
Judas Escargot
Not to defend GE’s abuse of stimulus money… but demand for wind turbines is declining, and (as usual) for no technical reason.
People “just don’t like them”.
And so the oil burns ever faster.
Steve
It’s almost as if the most important factor that drives job creation is DEMAND. Nah, couldn’t be…
Villago Delenda Est
The thing is, the solar panel outfit that recently went bankrupt did so because of heavily subsidized Chinese competition, making it impossible for them to be viable.
As long as we keep subsidizing the old energy sources and artificially depressing their real costs, we’ll have this problem. I don’t care if it does cause Landrieu’s panties to be put into knots.
cleek
what’s the implication here? is Obama responsible now for creating jobs in Norway and the UK ?
PurpleGirl
Immelt, I believe heads that jobs commission.
Whirlpool got a $19 million stimulus grant for research in making refrigerators more energy efficient. A few weeks after the grant was awarded, Whirlpool announced that they were closing a factor in Indiana and building a new factory in Mexico. (I firmly believe that the grant should have been withdrawn.)
PeakVT
A lot of this is about financing and the lack thereof, but offshore wind is still in a learning phase, so there would be ups and downs even in a good economy. It would help the secotr if countries would keep their subsidies on a predictable trajectory. That’s been a big problem in the US.
Dennis SGMM
Am I the only one who thinks that Obama has made some incomprehensible choices in his appointees? Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, and now Immelt. Either these people mirror Obama’s thinking (Too horrible an idea to contemplate) or he’s getting some Mongolian-clusterfuck-level of bad advice. He deserves better and we deserve better. The whole lot of them haven’t managed to reduce unemployment below nine percent. That’s gonna hurt in ’12.
trollhattan
It’s almost as though the private sector needs to eliminate uncertainty that the business will be there. Something, perhaps, like this.
trollhattan
Also, too, consumer-owned power sometimes has to jump through hoops to access tax breaks, subsidies, etc.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/13/3905157/smud-selling-wind-energy-project.html
The Moar You Know
Turns out that solar is a little more complex than just chucking a bunch of panels on a roof, wiring it in, and calling it a day.
Frankly, this is a drag. I have a very small solar setup which I love for my yard lights and security cameras – about 30 watts – but never really thought through the implications of having several thousand watts of heart-stopping DC current sitting on my roof, and how badly that could go to shit were there a problem.
Looks like building codes and legislation needs to be dragged into the 21st century as well. Nothing’s ever as simple as it ought to be.
singfoom
Great idea. Let’s scale back renewable energy. Jesus. I’m still wondering why we don’t create crazy targets for low emission buildings and start a whole industry be refitting all buildings to have some kind of generation at the site.
It’s a win win when the time horizon is 10+ years. Am I taking crazy pills? We’ve got 13.5% unemployment in construction. We could put all those people back to work AND save energy and help encourage innovation.
Oh well, logic. Dreams and all that.
AliceBlue
Just one more thing to make my frame of mind worse than it already is. I’m starting to think that even if Obama is re-elected and the Dems keep control of the Senate and take the House, this country is just totally finished.
The Moar You Know
@Dennis SGMM: Not incomprehensible. He’s a legal expert, not an economist. Had I gone into office not knowing shit about economics – and I don’t – and someone I trusted said “these are the guys” I’d have gone with them, which seems to be exactly what he has done.
That he picked guys who would ensure a shitstorm of failure would rain down upon the heads of the working poor is unfortunate but all too easy to understand when you look at it that way. Not an excuse – and I think Obama’s going to pay the price for those decisions – but just the way it is.
Social outcast
Why can’t the terrorists attack a wind turbine now and then? That’s the only way Washington will start viewing them as a strategic asset.
schrodinger's cat
Is it me or is this blog sounding more and more negative with every passing day? I know things are bad but I am getting a little tired of this defeatist, chicken little attitude about everything.
Dennis SGMM
@singfoom:
Ya’ damn commie! What? You want to throw a bone to the fucking tree-hugging hippies? As for those lazy construction workers, they should all have earned MBA’s so that they could contribute something besides roads, bridges, homes, hospitals and schools to our great nation. Next thing you know you’ll be calling for fluoridated water.
Repudiate Stalin or else!
FlipYrWhig
So now we’re supposed to be up in arms that GE received some kind of stimulus incentive but is now proceeding to cut jobs… _in Norway and the UK_? Why the fuck should that matter to me? Now, if they pocketed the money and then cut jobs to build wind turbines _in the US_, that’d be a much more worrisome turn of events.
fuckwit
You know, this “trickle-down” supply-side economics IS JUST A BIG PONZI SCHEME.
In fact, I have to say, and with all due respect, that supply-side economics is A MONSTROUS LIE.
How about that?
FlipYrWhig
@singfoom:
True. Let’s try doing that with Americans and in America.
cleek
@singfoom:
one program is not working out as well as hoped. shit happens. also, it’s in northern Europe.
TheF79
Not that this excuses GE’s behavior if it took subsidies in exchange for doing X and didn’t deliver on X, but with the cratering of natural gas prices due to technological advances (shale basically), the levelized costs of wind are quite a bit above those of natural gas, whereas in 2005-2007 they were rapidly approaching parity. Combine that with a recession and diminished electricity demand and demand for turbines in general has declined (new capacity installations had been increasing by 30-40% a year up until this year I believe).
fuckwit
@schrodinger’s cat: Bitching is the sole refuge of the powerless. That’s why I do it, anyway.
If you have any better ideas, which might actually work, and haven’t already been proven over and over again NOT to work, I’d love to hear ’em. I got nothing.
FlipYrWhig
@cleek: As a progressive, the way forward is clear: demand that US corporations continue to pay a phalanx of Norwegian engineers to do high-tech work overseas!
Jenn
Oh, please. This post is exactly why I’ve been coming here less lately. Please tell what the hell US stimulus funds have to do with projects in Norway and the UK. If you’re going to bring up stimulus funds, maybe you could say what GE’s projects & requirements were. I can tell you our company got a project that included stimulus funds, and I have never had a project that came with so many strings – any of which we failed to uphold, meant we were paying the government back a hell of a lot of money (well, for us we’re pretty damn small).
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Please cease picking on President Obama’s friends. They are savvy businessmen.
.
.
FormerSwingVoter
OT, but can we please get a “Call Your Fucking Senators” thread? Dems need to be reminded that a large-scale Jobs Bill is their only hope.
Dennis SGMM
@The Moar You Know:
Thank you for at least making Obama’s decisions in this arena comprehensible. I, too, am concerned that the administration’s failure to provide even a glimmer of hope on the economic front will be its undoing.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Okay, so where are the rays of hope? Our nation is slip-sliding further into hunger, homelessness and unemployment. The people whom we voted for seem to be powerless to reverse any of those trends. You can put on a happy face and whistle “Don’t Worry Be Happy” until you’re blue in the face. At the end of the day we’re still fucked and the system seems incapable of unfucking us. We’re in a hole that was decades in the digging and now both parties are shouting “Dig harder!.”
singfoom
@cleek: I understand it’s just one program. My larger point about a national effort to generate power at the site of consumption stands. Yes, it is complicated as Moar You Know stated.
We could update the building codes, require generation facilities on all new construction.
Maybe it is just me lusting after a house with a robust solar system (Yes, I know this doesn’t work for all locales) and a flowback meter so ComEd can send me a damn check when I produce more than I use.
It just seems like a no-brainer to me.
schrodinger's cat
@fuckwit: I don’t have any solutions but I am going try to do more stuff locally as in volunteering for Elizabeth Warren. Bitching is fine, I do it too but constant negativity just makes one want to give up. Did people really think that the Obama’s election would solve everything?
@Dennis SGMM:
I don’t disagree that things look bleak at the moment. One ray of hope, I can think of, everyone else still wants to buy our debt (US Treasuries). The dollar is still the defacto currency of the world.Bad as things are here, things are worse in most other economies.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ditto that. I normally try to keep it civil but the last few days I’m reaching my own “fuck the trolls” tipping point. I think part of it has to do with that campaign season has begun but all the political action is on the GOP side right now because there isn’t much to decide on the Dem primary side. People are less cranky when they have something to do. Sitting around waiting for the storm to arrive doesn’t put anybody in a good mood.
srv
Does this mean the Kennedy’s view is saved?
Samara Morgan
@Dennis SGMM: the jobs will come back when the GOP/teabaggers have succeeded in reducing the average american workers standard of living to that of an Indian or Chinese worker.
That is how the “freed” market works, jobs flow to the cheapest labor source.
The system is WAI.
:)
look at Ikea. they can build cheap furniture in the US now because we are a third world country compared to sweden.
les
@Dennis SGMM:
Rather, disinterested,is my guess. Bread, butter, etc. Most of our reps apparently are not capable of anything but collecting campaign contributions and votes.
Nevgu
What a pathetic concern troll post by Captain Doom Chicken Little Cup Half Empty Cole.
You don’t even understand how the stock market works and now you think that you have some sort of point here about what a multinational is doing?
So pathetic.
ronin122
Never minding GE’s connections with the Economic Advisory Board, their taking stimulus funds, and the fact that their layoffs are in Europe. Let’s consider things for a moment, and let me be clear that I’m not an apologist for GE in the slightest. Now, GE does NOT run power plants or anything associated with electric power production. They are nothing but a contractor that builds the shit. That is, they build and install the wind turbines that OTHERS ORDER and subsequently own. Now let’s consider the consequences. If power companies aren’t asking for wind turbines–and realistically, there’s no incentive to install new generation when there’s no new demand, and it’d be so expensive to buy new turbines AND decommission a pre-existing plant–then GE can’t sell them. Is a company going to make things it can’t sell? Would YOU make expensive things to sell when no one’s going to buy? I think not. Thus, I fail to see why we’re tsk-tsking GE on this one. Issues with the company elsewhere are irrelevant to this discussion.
JGabriel
It’s John Galt’s world, we just suffer and die in it (via Great Orange Satan):
The Job Creators are on strike! OMG, Ayn Rand was right!
.
Dennis SGMM
@schrodinger’s cat:
You right, as usual. I’m in my Sixties so I am prone to succumb to Old Guyism. Or Old Goyism. It isn’t all bad. Not all. I get dispirited when I see my country, which started with every possible advantage, foundering so badly now. Pols have rarely been famous for their courage, that’s a given. It strikes me that today’s pols are are not up to the job of turning our economy or our future around. We still have some of the most intelligent, hard working people on the face of the earth yet no one seems able or willing to parlay our resources and our talents into prosperity for a reasonable number of us.
Southern Beale
OT but this is worth following
Hmm …. I’m sure the MSM will get right on this one. /sarcasm
Jager
Mrs J and I spent a week in an “Off the Grid” house, in the hills NW of Santa Maria. It was pretty damn cool sitting on the deck, ice tinkling in our glasses, listening to Van Morrison sing Caravan knowing the closest power line was 19 miles away. The solar system for the house was mounted in a 6×8 aluminum cargo trailer, two 3×8 panels, battery back up and inverter all mounted inside the little trailer. It was wired into the house through a normal fuse box. A small monitor was mounted on the wall, next to it was a starter button for a tiny (I mean tiny) propane powered generator, in case of solar failure. In 7 partly cloudy days we never saw the monitor drop below 80% of power and that was usually late in the evening after we watched movies and sat TV. The house had instant hot water fired by propane, gas stove and an electric/gas double door fridge. If you spent time in the house, you’d never know it was solar powered. It was perfect and well engineered. The system cost just under 12k plus a couple of grand for the backup generator. (The power company wanted over 50k to string a line to the house) It works!
I stopped and talked to the solar company and they said you can do a system for a 3,000 sq foot house that will run a washer, dryer, etc for less than 20k, you could add on high efficientcy wind power for relatively short money to run additional juice into the solar battery system.
I have a friend who lives 5 months a year on his 45 ft sailboat in Newport RI, he has a small wind generator that keeps his batteries topped off. He can even run a microwave for short periods via the invertor,the wind brings the batteries right back up and no he’s not in a slip, he is on a moooring.
Dennis SGMM
@Jager:
I’m relieved to find that it is impossible for me to die of envy.
AliceBlue
@Dennis SGMM:
This.
You expressed exactly what I’m thinking, only much better than I could have. I’m pretty much an optimist most of the time; I’ve just been on a bit of a downer the past few days.
schrodinger's cat
@Dennis SGMM: It is sad because it is so unnecessary, I am referring to the austerity b.s. and the fixation with the debt and deficit.
Dennis SGMM
@schrodinger’s cat:
Gotcha. “Austerity” to me anyway, is a cop out for pols who lack either the courage or the imagination to do what actually needs to be done. Austerity in a down economy has been a catastrophic failure at least as far back as the Weimar Republic.
Arclite
Offshore wind is hard. It costs 3x what on shore wind does per MW. It also requires extensive environmental impact studies, more than what land based installations do. The offshore wind project in Hawaii has been stalled for years due to the impact studies. So if no one can get clearance to build offshore wind, it’s kind of hard to blame GE for scaling back.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JGabriel:
On strike huh? For reals? All across the nation? So when do we sic Taft-Hartley on their miserable, economy threatening behinds? Last time I checked coordinated cross-industry strikes can get your ass landed in jail. Or did somebody repeal that law and I didn’t notice?
Arm The Homeless
@daryljfontaine: Tatooine exists, except apparently it’s cold and life-less. Sorta like Lucas’ Padme. Suck it fan-bois!
wrb
Carbon tax
cathyx
Our power company gives us the option to pay a little bit more for our electricity that comes from renewable energy sources. So that if we choose that option, 100 percent of our electricity use is offset with renewable energy. With wind energy, which I chose, I pay an extra $3.50 a month for a unit of renewable wind power.
Jager
@Dennis SGMM: Friends of ours own a chunk of mountain land in Colorado and they have converted their yurt to solar using the trailer concept,built at the solar company and then trucked up to their site. They will have just over 25k in the 300 sq foot yurt and the power system plus the the surprisingly low cost of the land. Of course they have to use a snow machine to get in during the winter…but, that’s probably better, isn’t it?
Our goal is to find a nice remote piece of land and do a tiny solar powered house. There is some really nice acreage in California for decent prices. We will do water retention, the solar and haul in our drinking water.
MarkJ
@JGabriel: If they’re on strike then why are they still getting paid . . . handsomely?
PurpleGirl
In regards to potential wind power usage in Norway… Norway’s electricity is mostly produced by hydroelectric plants in those fjords. My pen pal’s father was the head manager of a hydroelectric plant near Lillehammer.
Hoodie
@JGabriel: Damn union thugs! Seriously, Boehner must feel pretty confident that his audience has the IQ of a toaster. It probably does.
mclaren
Wind power is bullshit. There’s no way to store it and it’s too intermittant to provide much energy. Also, the constantly changing loads on an electricity grid with a bunch of wind turbines hooked up to it creates huge problems with managing the load on the grid.
Everyone who’s invested in wind power has gone broke.
Most of the “green energy” fantasies are just that — delusions. Geothermal power, solar photovoltaic, wind power, tidal power, biofuels from algae…none of ’em even remotely work in the real world.
If we want to survive Peak Oil with anything like an industrial civilization, we need to build hundreds of nuclear reactors in America and we need to start building ’em now.
Mino
@trollhattan: After California’s Enron experience, can you blame them for wanting in-house energy sources that are fixed-cost.
The Spy Who Loved Me
Just goes to show that it’s not what you know, but who you know.
And why are we giving stimulus money to fund jobs in foreign counties?
Sideshow Bill
@campionrules: The answer is so easy, even David Frum came up with it. Tax carbon!! (I won’t link to the moron to give him page views)
On another note, the company I work for makes batteries, lead acid batteries, easily recycled, great for stationary storage and solar applications. All the employees just got an email announcing layoffs in 3 weeks. (Of course we did just add 6 VP’s when what we really need are about 60 process engineers in the plants to tighten up specs and make sure equipment runs right) The kicker, we received stimulus money to expand production at 2 plants and the plan is to finish installing the equipment, certify it, make a run of batteries and let it sit idle. There’s no demand. Thus no jobs. (But the CEO and his new VP’s will do a good job looting the company.) /EndRant
Odie Hugh Manatee
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s not just you. Negativism is a self-sustaining loop amongst the emo progs because, like the far right has discovered, it sells and you can make money doing it. Raise the outrage and watch the money flow in to the coffers. Add the ratfuckers to the brew and you have the perfect storm of ‘outrage’. The right loves to help the left self-destruct and the emo progs welcome their ‘support’ in the furtherance of their goals.
Purity and ponies.
AA+ Bonds
I should point out that GE isn’t COMPLETELY full of shit about the market not expanding as quickly as predicted, and it has a lot to do with state governments in coastal states. Wind turbines off our coast could provide a tremendous amount of energy with the right investments, but state governments are trying to please a number of constituents including property owners and fishers.
AA+ Bonds
@The Moar You Know:
There are a number of U.S. DoE grants going out in January to address this very issue.
There are certainly safety issues from outdated codes, but an even larger issue is that the patchwork of permitting and metering policies that have grown up around alternative energy in homes has made it difficult and onerous for homeowners and contractors to install them.
Believe it or not, this story actually demonstrates a smaller if also very real problem – the bigger problem is that it takes too much time and money at the permitting and inspections office in many places where rooftop solar might be bigger.
AA+ Bonds
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
It’s election season and so it’s time for you to hush that talk. If other people want to do it you need to ignore them and drown it out. You need to play it like the left is your big fucking buddy for the next thirteen months no matter what anyone on the left says. First step is for you to stop this “emoprog” nonsense.
wrb
@AA+ Bonds:
The emoprogs are working as hard to deliver the White House to Perry as they did to deliver the House to the Republicans.
I think they will likely succeed again, but why should we on the left nourish them?
keestadoll
@Jager: A dream of ours for some time and hardly a discussion goes by between Mr. Keestadoll and I that doesn’t involve our off the grid plans for our future country life. He’s in charge of the planning the power elements, and I am in charge of planning our organic farm. It’s hard not to see the writing on the walls kids, and all should embrace their inner Boy Scout pretty much NOW.
keestadoll
@mclaren: Up here a land wind farm was stopped because of the noise it would cause during construction and birds would “undoubtedly perish!” NIMBYISM: keeping the Humboldt clock-stoppers happy and everyone in the Summer of ’69.
John Puma
You get a bit more ironic punch when you explain that Immelt is not simply a “member” of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board but actually it’s chairperson. (Replacing Volker)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/economy/22immelt.html
John Puma
@Dennis SGMM:
Clearly he’s getting bad advice from the horrific choices he’s made for his advisers but who, EXACTLY, is his “adviser choice czar”?
Montarvillois
GE transfers its Healthcare division to Beijing.
http://fnno.com/story/news-corner/331-ge-healthcare-transfers-china-ge-news-corner