My series of stories on stimulus money for green energy going abroad made a splash when I wrote them last fall and spring. Now, they’re making a comeback as out-sourcing becomes a major campaign issue.

In West Virginia’s third congressional district, Republican Spike Maynard released a new campaign ad last weekend challenging incumbent Nick Rahall on his vote for the stimulus package, which Maynard’s ad claims created jobs in China building wind turbines. Rahall wants the story pulled for being factually incorrect, and Maynard is refusing.

The controversy over the ad was first picked up Politico, and I attempted to put a little context in with a blog post over at the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s Shop Notes blog. And now, the accusation of using green stimulus money to create jobs in China is surfacing in other races, like in the Illinois race between Republican Bobby Schilling and Democrat incumbent Phil are.

In both cases, the accusations are at least partially based off the story we did with ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer in February, that reported as much as 80 percent of the green stimulus grants are going to foreign companies. The ABC story in particular focused on a plan to build a giant wind farm in Texas using Chinese turbines and up to $450 million in stimulus.

Based on the reporting I’ve done on the subject, neither the Republicans making the accusation or the Democrats trying to argue it’s a non-issue are getting it right. And both are using badly outdated numbers. I’ve put together a short FAQ to help answer questions raised by these ads and the defense against them.

Did foreign companies get money from the stimulus to build wind turbines?

Yes.

I’ve recently recalculated the numbers and found:

• Of the 1,100-odd projects funded under the stimulus green energy grant program, 75 were major wind farms.
• Those wind farms picked up $4.4 billion worth of grants.
• 54 percent of that  – $2.38 billion — has gone to foreign developers. A total of 4,232 turbines were erected on those 75 farms, and 2,760 were built by foreign manufacturers – that’s 65.2 percent. Some of those foreign manufacturers have factories in the U.S., but not all of them and geography and the difficulty in moving giant turbine parts means that even some companies with factories here have still brought equipment from overseas. (See my February story to see how we tracked one Indiana wind farm’s parts to Vietnam and Denmark.)

But, isn’t it true that 100 percent of the projects were built in the United States?

This is a fact being offered by Democrats, who cite a rebuttal to my stories from the American Wind Energy Association. This is true, and AWEA is correct in stating that, but it has nothing to do with the issue – it’s a red herring. What’s at issue is who owns the companies who are benefitting from the stimulus dollars, and even though the numbers have shifted dramatically in the favor of American developers (see above) more than half of the money has still gone to foreign-owned developers, and 65.2 percent of the turbines built were still built by foreign manufacturers.

So, did the stimulus send money to China to create jobs building wind turbines?

Yes, but it’s not fair or true to say that most or all of the money went to create jobs in China. Respected independent fact-checking website Politifact dealt with this question last spring, when Sarah Palin incorrectly claimed in a Facebook post that 80 percent of stimulus money for alternative energy went to China.

Of the 4,232 turbines that have been built under this program, only three have been purchased outright from China. And the wind farm in Texas has not been built … yet. So, it hasn’t gotten any money… yet. But if a certain amount of work is done on the project by Dec. 31 of this year, it can still qualify for the money. And the Texas farm is very much still on the table. In fact, the Chinese manufacturer of the turbines announced they have built the first turbine to send to the United States.

That said, many of the turbine manufacturers (foreign and domestic) rely on a supply chain that’s partially-based in China. So, except for those three turbines in Minnesota, no whole turbines have come from China, but parts almost certainly have. We don’t know how many unless the companies that brought them in decide to share that information, so we can’t say for sure how many Chinese companies have benefitted and how many Chinese jobs were created.

It is safe to say far more jobs were created in the United States and Europe, than in China.