Chinese Company Offers Free Wind Power Training For Coal Miners In WY

A subsidiary of one of China's largest wind turbine manufacturers has offered to provide free training to unemployed coal miners in Wyoming.

"When we think of coal country in the United States, we think of West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. But Wyoming is where the majority of American coal comes from. In fact, the Cowboy State, as it calls itself, produces four times as much coal as West Virginia. That also means it has suffered a devastating loss of coal mining jobs in recent years as the use of coal to make electricity has declined. Now a Chinese company wants to retrain some of those unemployed miners to work in the wind power industry.

Goldwind Americas is the US arm of one of China’s largest wind turbine manufacturers. Of all the states in America, Wyoming is one of the best suited for wind energy because it has high average wind speeds and lots of wide open spaces. Nevertheless, Wyoming has been hostile to wind power. It is the only state that levies a special tax on electricity generated by wind.

That hasn’t deterred Goldwind Americas, however. Last week at an energy conference in Wyoming, Goldwind offered to provide free training to unemployed coal miners looking for work building and maintaining wind power farms and wind turbine technicians. Free retraining for unemployed workers is more than the state government is willing to do for its citizens."

Steve Hanley reports for CleanTechnica May 29, 2017.