PROVIDENCE, R.I. As Rhode Island moves to expand its renewable energy market, lobbyists at the Statehouse are finding the debate provides a different form of green power: cash.

At least $400,000 has been spent so far this year by corporations with a stake as lawmakers hash out agreements worth big money to power developers, energy suppliers and labor unions hurting for jobs. That is double the amount spent on such lobbying in 2005, just before Gov. Don Carcieri set goal of meeting 20 percent of the state's electricity needs through renewable resources by 2011, according to an Associated Press review of lobbying reports.

Some members of Rhode Island's part-time legislature say the work done by lobbyists helped enable them to vote knowledgeably on complicated legislation while simultaneously trying to close a massive budget deficit that has occupied most of their time and attention.

"The best lobbyists are sources of good information," said Sen. J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich.

Still, a few lawmakers have occasionally bristled at the closed-door compromises and last-minute dealmaking.

"I have concerns that we just don't know what we're dealing with," said Rep. Laurence Ehrhardt, R-North Kingstown, who fumed when the House Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources was asked to vote on a major amendment aiding the construction of a 100-turbine wind farm miles off the Rhode Island coast with just minutes to study it.

"Having it plopped in front of us, moving for passage before opening the document, that's just plain wrong," Ehrhardt said.

Few of the lobbyists involved in the debate were willing to talk publicly about their work. Not surprisingly, the biggest lobbying payouts have been made by the company with the most at stake: New Jersey-based Deepwater Wind LLC, which spends at least $10,000 monthly, according to state records.

Last year, Carcieri's administration selected Deepwater Wind as the developer it wants to see build a small wind farm off Block Island and a second, roughly 100-turbine project around 15 miles off the coastline.

Despite getting an initial go-ahead from Carcieri, the firm faced a major problem: no major customer had promised to buy the power. Without a big buyer committed over the long-term, getting investors to finance the project would be difficult.

Solving that business problem required untangling a political impasse.

For several years, the Republican governor and Democratic lawmakers had clashed over who should buy renewable power and how to compensate the buyer for the financial risks involved. Carcieri initially wanted to create a state-run collective to serve as the buyer, a plan lawmakers rejected.

Democrats then said the state's main power distributor, National Grid, should be the buyer, but Carcieri vetoed that legislation. Meanwhile, environmental advocates feared the state was focusing too much on an unproven offshore wind farm at the expense of other, smaller projects.

Deepwater hired lobbyist Robert Goldberg, a former lawmaker and the husband of Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg, and Jeffrey Grybowski, Carcieri's former chief-of-staff.

"Our goal was to build as much of a consensus as we could," said Jim Lanard, the company's managing director.

The coalition includes competitors. Cape Wind Associates LLC hired a lobbying firm to make sure National Grid could buy renewable power from renewable energy projects outside Rhode Island, so long as those projects provided an economic benefit for the state.

Dennis Duffy, a vice president for Cape Wind, said his lobbyists make sure the voice of business is represented in the debate, even though state lawmakers have grown increasingly familiar with his company's views.

"It's hard in any legislature for people who have different professions to become an expert in everything that comes up in a legislative session," he said.