Renewable Energies | © image: Aleksandar Rodic
Globally many automotive plants sit idle after decades of successful assembly. Some have closed or reduced production, with jobs disappearing at astonishing rates. But in some cases alternative assembly from renewable-energy and new-tech enterprises are taking advantage of the automotive downturn. In turn transforming defunct automotive labour and assembly lines into alternative ‘green jobs’. Many renewable-energy companies are seeing opportunities in old automotive assembly lines to produce equipment for solar and wind power systems. Following the trend of the rust-tech industrial base converting to clean-tech manufacturing.
The principal of buying assets when they’re cheap is hardly a new idea, or exclusive to the automotive industry, therefore the growth of renewable energy is no exception to market development. Companies are paying only about 25 percent of the estimated cost of building those factories from scratch. Taking advantage of the low prices available today to expand their manufacturing capacity cheaply and to position themselves to grow when market conditions improve. These projects are real attempts to replace thousands of lost automotive jobs with ‘green jobs’. It also proves the ability of some renewable-energy companies to benefit from the recession, especially from the automotive industry’s pain.
“…a win-win situation…”
In some ways, the recession has been a major advantage to startups that might have otherwise had difficulty raising the capital to buy manufacturing equipment, or persuading manufacturing partners to buy the equipment, especially if they planned to start small. Aside from the manufacturing capacity, the hard times for the automotive industry also means good deals for capital equipment, including machines for production and assembly. Meanwhile, other companies are finding ways to make use of automotive technology for renewable energy. Sustainability is a comprehensive concept. The challenges of climate protection and of the market can only be met if we move on from automotive to eco-motive concepts. In other cases, companies only plan to make use of extra capacity at existing automotive-supply factories to keep manufacturing expenses low. Taking into consideration the state of the automotive industry; a win-win situation for all players and industries involved.
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