There are other business opportunities out there that require the same skills as auto parts, but instead call for producing parts for emerging energy markets.

“But how do you transition to that type of business?” said Hogg, market specialist for NextEnergy, a Detroit-based non-profit company focused on accelerating investments in wind, solar, battery and other new markets.

It is a different way of doing business, making a small number of complex parts, rather than the high volumes of the auto industry. Carmakers and their suppliers may be talking today about alternative energy, hybrid powertrains and plug-in electric vehicles, but there are also business opportunities in non-transportation markets, Hogg said during the seminar Aug. 4 in Traverse City.

Take wind energy. General Electric Co. has developed a new wind-power unit that uses highly balanced and precision parts such as fiberglass for wind blades and the housing that holds the generator, said Stephen Johnson, manufacturing program manager for GE Energy.

Molded Fiber Glass Cos. of Ashtabula, Ohio, which makes a variety of structural composite parts for the auto industry and made the first Corvette fiberglass bodies, is one of GE’s wind turbine suppliers.

GE also buys steel and aluminum components that are rolled, shaped and machined to capture, store and distribute power from the wind.

The company designs its wind turbines, but relies on its suppliers to make most of the parts, Johnson said. Although the industry is in its infancy in North America, a growing focus on renewable energy sources — rather than oil and coal — could call for a huge increase in production, with as much as 20 percent of the U.S. energy needs supplied by wind, solar and other “green” power programs.

GE expects the largest growth areas for wind turbine production in the U.S. will come from Texas, California, Michigan and Ohio. The company has just started building a $100 million wind energy research and development center in the Detroit suburb of Van Buren Township, adjacent to auto supplier Visteon Corp. That location will make it easier for auto suppliers to check out other business potential in energy.