Ontario,Canada  has a 60% “local content” requirement for renewable energy installed in the province.This is illegal according to WTO but unless someone challenges it in the body nothing will come out of it

China from 2004 to 2010 had a “70% local content” requirement.Now that their wind turbine makers are making major inroads into foreign markets ( read A-Power Systems) , they revised the law in Jan 2010 . No doubt as it has become redundant .

USA which has not done anything major to mitigate climate change , now wants to put a local content requirement on renewable energy. This was pushed because a large amount of cash grant going to a large wind power project promoted by a Chinese consortium.

‘Buy American’ boondoggle – LA Times

The refusal by most Republicans to have anything to do with clean energy or the fight against global warming means the job is being left almost entirely to Democrats, who have a strong grasp of environmental science but often a dim understanding of economics. That can undermine even the most well meaning of environmental initiatives, as a group of Senate Democrats seems determined to do with green-energy projects funded by stimulus dollars.

Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) are leading an effort to freeze payments from a clean-power grant program until Congress can consider a bill they introduced in March. SB 3069 would impose “buy American” rules on such projects, ensuring that taxpayer funds would go only to renewable energy plants that use materials made in the U.S.

Schumer et al say they just want to create American jobs. They were appalled when developers of a huge proposed wind farm in Texas announced they would seek up to $450 million in stimulus funds while buying their wind turbines from a Chinese company.

It’s a good clue that you’re on the wrong track with an initiative meant to encourage renewable energy when it’s opposed by the renewable energy industry. The American Wind Energy Assn. disdains the Schumer proposal because a freeze on stimulus payments would stall the country’s nascent clean-power movement. And buy American rules would have a chilling effect on the industry, in addition to wasting taxpayer dollars.

It would make more sense for the policymakers to use policy to make American renewable energy companies with great technology more competitive with Chinese ones which get huge subsidies in terms of extremely low cost of capital and labor