China labor edge tops Obama's 'green' jobs

That gap shows the challenge Obama faces as he works to create “green” jobs. Asia makes more than half the world's wind and solar energy equipment, and is gaining ground as U.S. factories lose out to cheaper labor and higher demand for clean energy. China for the first time topped the U.S. in wind-turbine manufacturing and installations last year, the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council said Wednesday in a report.

Obama is giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wind and solar industries to create jobs in the U.S. even as production expands faster overseas. First Solar Inc., the world's largest maker of thin-film solar-power modules, won US$16.3 million to add 200 manufacturing jobs at its Ohio plant, yet 71 percent of its planned factory growth will go to Malaysia. The company employs 4,500 globally.

“The cost of manufacturing here is too expensive compared to Asia,” said Guy Chaffin, chief executive officer of Elite Search International, a Roseville, California-based executive search firm that has found employees for Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar and Solar Millennium AG. “As far as a flood of good jobs coming to the U.S., we're not seeing it.”

To compete for clean-energy jobs, the U.S. must create demand by capping fossil-fuel pollution that contributes to global warming, Carol Browner, Obama's coordinator of energy and environment policy, said Wednesday at the opening of a three-day renewable-energy conference in Washington.

Obama backs a “cap-and-trade” system to limit carbon emissions and establish a market in pollution allowances, a proposal that passed the House and has stalled in the Senate. Congress is also debating measures, backed by the administration, that would require utilities to buy some of their power from renewable sources.

The U.S. solar industry added about 18,000 jobs last year, almost doubling total employment to about 40,000, said Monique Hanis, a spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industry Association, a Washington-based lobbying group. About half those were in manufacturing, she said.

Jobs in the wind industry held steady at about 85,000 last year, as a drop in manufacturing was offset by gains in installations and development, according to the Wind Energy Association.

Suntech, the world's largest maker of polysilicon solar panels, said last week it plans to open a plant in Goodyear, Arizona, that will assemble 30 megawatts of solar modules a year starting in September. In China, Suntech plans to boost production capacity this year by 40 percent to 1,400 megawatts.

In Wuxi, China, where Suntech makes solar panels, the monthly minimum wage is 968 renminbi (US$141.79), according to China's official newspaper People's Daily. That's 89 percent less than the U.S. minimum-wage of about US$1,320 a month for a 40-hour work-week.

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