A consortium of Chinese and American renewable energy firms said last week that they had chosen Nevada as the location of a 320,000-square-foot wind turbine manufacturing and assembly plant.

The turbine plant, whose precise site has yet to be announced, will create an estimated 1,000 long-term manufacturing jobs in the state and is expected to be up and running by 2011.

Two companies leading the development of the Nevada facility, A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese renewable energy technology manufacturer, and the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a private equity firm, are also key players in a controversial $1.5 billion, 600-megawatt wind farm project under way in West Texas.

That project, announced last year, came under fire after it was revealed that its backers planned to tap $450 million in grants from the economic stimulus package, even though the turbines would be manufactured and assembled in Shenyang, China.

The companies subsequently said that at least 70 percent of the turbine components for the Texas wind farm would be manufactured in the United States.

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Source: New York Times

Tags: Economic opportunity | climate change | global warming | green economy | renewable | windfarm