Money from the 2009 stimulus bill to help support the renewable energy industry continues to flow overseas, despite Congressional criticism and calls for change, according to a new analysis of the program by the Investigative Reporting Workshop of American University.
The report finds that the total given out to renewable energy production developers has added up to $2.1 billion; the amount of that which was sourced to overseas manufacturers was more than 79 percent. Most of the money, $1.9 billion, has been for wind energy generation projects. The largest grant made under the program so far, a $178 million payment on Dec. 29, went to Babcock & Brown, a bankrupt Australian company that built a Texas wind farm using turbines made by a Japanese company.
Said United Steelworker president Leo Gerard: "If we keep following the trend lines of what s existing, we re going to end up with an inability to generate real wealth. My concern is that it's more than wind turbines, and my concern is how we stake out our ground and have a manufacturing strategy for the country that will lead us back to the ability to create real wealth.
