On episode 104 of The Climate Realism Show, we explain that to save the whales we need to kill these growing large-scale offshore wind projects. These so-called “wind farms” are much larger and do much more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the Mid-Atlantic poses an existential risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. That is just one of many ocean mammals harassed and killed by these projects that will, at best, provide unreliable and expensive energy. Remember when “save the whales” was the cry of the environmentalists? Now they are fine with a spike in dead whales washing up on our Atlantic beaches as long as the “green energy” agenda continues apace.
The Heartland Institute is part of a lawsuit to stop to a major wind project in the Atlantic and save the right whale. We will talk about that effort with Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson of CFACT, who are also part of the suit. Join them and host Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken to talk about that, plus the Crazy Climate News of the Week.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET (12 p.m. CT) for the kind of climate realism you can’t find anywhere else, and join the chat to get your questions answered, too.
Back in the sixties and seventies “Save the Whales” was the exclusive domain of the political left.
As Bob Dylan might say, “the times they are a changin.”
Three major “conservative” organizations – the National Legal Policy Center, Heartland Institute, and my organization, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow – recently filed a major lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court to save the Right Whale from facing potential oblivion.
Why aren’t the larger Green groups, unlike the grassroots ones, rallying around the efforts of these organizations to save Right whales? Good question. Perhaps it’s because the threat to the remaining 350 of them doesn’t come from Russian, Norwegian, or Japanese whaling vessels, as it did back in the 70’s. Rather, it is from so-called “Green energy” in the form of offshore wind. Right whales are being threatened by the Biden Administration’s fast-track plans to hurriedly place 30,000 MW of wind power generation off the Eastern coast, and doing so without the proper sort of environmental impact assessment they might otherwise perform for, say, offshore oil.
The collective decision by our outfits to take the issue of whale protection to Court came after two years of futile attempts to get the Biden Administration to listen. Offshore wind development threatens the nearly extinct North Atlantic Right Whale in various ways, and the government refuses to investigate.
The two agencies which share responsibility for making sure wind development does not harm whales include the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which oversees building wind facilities, and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS or NOAA Fisheries), which enforces the various laws to protect whales. Neither seems intent on doing their job.
In issuing its “biological opinion” last September, for instance, NMFS only examined the impact that each of these projects individually and in isolation would have on the North Atlantic right whale. The agency did not, as it should have, issue a comprehensive and cumulative analysis examining the combined harm which all the projects, together, would inflict on the whales during their annual migration path.
If it had done so, it would have uncovered that dangerous noises generated from several projects combine to create much louder and more dangerous circumstances for marine mammals than noises coming from just a single project. In fact, impacts can combine over time as well, such as when migrating Right Whales are repeatedly forced to go around a dozen wind facilities into heavily trafficked shipping lanes. The risk of being struck by a ship then becomes ten times greater than for a single project.
It’s likely for such reasons the Endangered Species Act specifically calls for assessment of cumulative impacts such as these, but the Biden Administration has ignored this requirement.
BOEM and NMFS say there is no evidence of a threat to whales. But this is just a coverup. The Right Whale population began its rapid decline in 2017, the year offshore wind development began in earnest. The Humpback Whale death rate tripled that very year and has remained abnormally high.
NMFS actually provides some of the strongest evidence. For every wind project they estimate the number of marine mammals by species that will be adversely affected by construction noise, something which they call “Level B Harassment”. For Right Whales the cumulative total of predicted Level B Harassments the government projects, and allows for, is already roughly twice the total population of the mammal … and growing.
Why is this a big deal? Because such harassment can easily lead to a whale death. This can happen, for example, when the noise level of an operating turbine disrupts the navigation of a marine mammal, driving it into heavy ship traffic or fishing nets. BOEM and NMFS have refused to consider this deadly possibility, even for a single project like Dominion Energy’s windfarm off Virginia Beach, much less cumulatively. Meanwhile more and more whales are dying from ship strikes and fishing net entanglements as offshore wind development recklessly accelerates.
Harassment-caused death is merely one of many potentially deadly threats that BOEM and NMFS refuse to assess. There are others we have cited, including loss of habitat, reduced food supply, and concentrated ship traffic. This is why we are asking the Court to require that the government undertake such an investigation, as they are required to do so under the ESA, on all offshore wind projects cumulatively.
“Save the whales” is more than a slogan. It should be a directive our federal agencies are eager to carry out. But if they won’t do it, then they shouldn’t be surprised to see lawsuits headed their way from every corner of the public interest – including from those of us on the right.
The principal reason that there are no commercially viable, floating wind facilities that exist in the world today is because the cost to build, operate and maintain them is simply too exorbitant. Each turbine requires a massive “float” to support the turbine tower. Each tower float must be moored to the bottom in all directions so that it does not blow over.
FILE – This Oct. 30, 2002 file photo shows a speed boat passing by offshore windmills in the North Sea offshore from near Esbjerg, Denmark. On Wednesday Feb. 5, 2014, Oregon’s Governor, John Kitzhaber and other officials announced plans to develop a similar farm, as the West Coasts first offshore wind energy farm. (AP Photo/Heribert Proepper, file)
The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) recently weighed in on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) proposal to site two “Wind Energy Areas” (WEA) off the coast of Oregon. President Craig Rucker, who submitted CFACT’s official comments, noted “BOEM should not create administrative “Wind Energy Areas” because the technology being deployed, namely floating wind turbines, have not yet been proven economically viable.”
Rucker went on to note that, to date, the 88 MW Hywind Tampen facility in the North Sea is the only major floating wind project in the world, and it merely services two offshore oil rigs. To put faith in a technology that has yet to prove itself scalable to service hundreds of thousands of homes and business is foolish and needs more time. In addition, the costs are likely to be substantively higher than for turbines planted into the seabed, Rucker adds, and will require the construction of specialized vessels that are not even in existence yet.
To read the CFACT’s official comments in their entirety, click here.
CFACT, founded in 1985 by Craig Rucker and the late (truly great) David Rothbard, examines the relationship between human freedom, and issues of energy, environment, climate, economics, civil rights and more.
Scene off Norfolk coast
** Note: Slight graininess, best at smaller sizes
New York has set a goal for its electricity to be 70% powered by clean energy by 2030. This latest investment means the state is going to beat that goal because it will have enough operating, contracted, and under-development clean energy projects to supply 79% of the state’s 2030 electricity needs. New York is investing in a massive 6.4 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy – the largest state investment in clean energy in US history.
I am fed up with rent-seeking capitalists and naïve academics who claim that wind, water, and solar resources are the only ones needed to provide reliable electric power. This post shows by way of example that this is an unrealistic argument.
My primary focus over the last several years has been New York’s the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). Robert W. Howarth authored sections of the Climate Act and was a member of the Climate Action Council that is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” . He submitted a statement supporting the Scoping Plan that exemplifies the narrative that no new technology is needed:
I further wish to acknowledge the incredible role that Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford has played in moving the entire world towards a carbon-free future, including New York State. A decade ago, Jacobson, I and others laid out a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013). In that peer-reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro. We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs. I have seen nothing in the past decade that would dissuade me from pushing for the same path forward. The economic arguments have only grown stronger, the climate crisis more severe. The fundamental arguments remain the same.
I addressed Howarth’s claim and others in his statement in a post here late last year. I include this because it exemplifies the idea that wind, sun, and hydro can power New York’s electric grid completely. In this post I consider the challenge of using wind, solar, and hydro to replace one component of the NY grid – New York City’s existing fossil fired units
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) Gold Book the New York City (Zone J) fossil generation summer capability in 2022 was 9,026 MW. This represents the capacity needed to replace New York City’s fossil generation capacity at any hour. For the purposes of this thought experiment I am going to ignore reliability rules related to transmission constraints and in-city generation. I assume only that New York City needs dedicated availability of 9,026 MW. There is no chance that an additional 9,026 MW of hydro can be developed in New York and there is no guarantee that the amount of capacity will only be needed during the day which means we cannot use solar. This example estimates how much wind capacity from somewhere will be needed to provide this dedicated capacity requirement.
New York Wind Variability
In May 2022 I published Climate Act and New York State 2021 Wind Resources that evaluated New York State onshore wind availability. I used a New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) resource that provides 2021 wind production and 2021 wind curtailment. The data sets list the hourly total wind production and curtailments for the entire New York Control Area (NYCA). I have summarized the data in the following table. Curtailments are those hours when the system load is small enough that wind production is greater than what is needed so the wind power is curtailed, i.e., not used.
Table 1: NYISO 2021 Hourly Wind Production at the Aggregated NYCA-Wide Level
These data are representative of every wind energy resource data set I have ever seen. See, for example, analyses for Belgium by Michel at the Trust Yet Verify website or for Australia by Anton Lang. The crux of the problem is that low-energy density wind resources are highly correlated across wide areas. Across New York, and other regions, the wind speeds drop across the entire area frequently. Frequently, as in every time a high-pressure system crosses over the area. As a result, the mean annual average availability for all the NYCA onshore wind turbines is only 22% and the median is 16%.
Moreover, I believe it is unlikely that additional sources in a region will change the availability much. I do not expect any significant change to the low-end onshore wind numbers when all the land-based wind resources proposed to meet the Climate Act net-zero transition are developed. The overall distribution of expected offshore wind will be similar although the numbers will show slightly higher availability.
Implications
Wind variability has implications on the use of wind energy to replace firm dispatchable generation. I use these data as a starting point for this analysis to explain why the fact that the wind is always blowing somewhere does not mean it can be used cost-effectively to replace dispatchable fossil-fired generating in an electric grid that relies on wind and solar as claimed by Dr. Howarth and others.
To estimate the wind resources needed to replace New York City’s 9,026 MW of existing fossil-fired generation I will use the distribution of New York land-based wind with the following assumptions. In the absence of offshore observed wind energy historical data, I assumed that the wind production would be increased by a five-percentile category from the onshore wind distributions. In other words, when the onshore wind is at the 75% percentile capacity availability level, I assumed that offshore wind resources are at the 80% capacity level.
Table 2 estimates the amount of land-based or offshore wind capacity from the New York Control Area necessary to replace New York City’s 9,026 MW fossil capacity. Because the observed wind production capability at the 99th percentile is 78%, 11,563 MW of wind turbine capacity are needed (9,026 divided by 78%) to assure replacement of the existing fossil-fired units in New York City. For reliability support the wind resources must be able to cover all the levels of wind resource availability. Half of the time (50th percentile) 55,068 MW of capacity would be needed. In order to ensure reliability, wind capacity must be available at all hours but the wind capacities at the lower end of the distribution are unrealistic so a system dependent upon only wind energy is going to have to go wherever the wind is blowing. The proponents of the wind is always blowing somewhere respond that all New York must do is to import electricity from outside the NYCA to address this but have not used this kind of distribution to determine how much, from how far, would be necessary
Table 2: NYCA Wind Capacity Support Requirements to Replace NYC Fossil – 9,026 MW
To determine how much wind capacity is needed outside of New York, I first determined the
potential wind energy availability within the New York Control Area (NYCA). For capacity potential I used the larger capacity projections for land-base and offshore wind from two different modeling analyses. The offshore wind capacity (MW) in the Integration Analysis Scenario 2: Strategic Use of Low-Carbon Fuels was 12,675 MW. The onshore wind capacity in the NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlookwas 19,087 MW. Table 3 uses those resource projections to provide estimates of the available energy in the NYCA at each resource potential level. For each percentile I calculated the available capacity at each percentile for on-shore and offshore wind, summed them, and listed the deficit if the sum was less than 9,026 MW. For this thought experiment, the projected wind resources can replace the fossil resources up to the 70th percentile if all the wind power can be dedicated just to New York City at the hour when 9,026 MW of wind capacity is needed in the City. This means that somewhere between 65% and 70% of the time, wind resources outside the NYCA must provide additional power to replace New York City’s existing fossil resources.
Table 3: NYCA Wind Energy Available from Climate Act Wind Resource Projections
Table 4 provides an estimate of the wind generated capacity available to cover the deficit margin in Table 3 outside the control area in an area similar in size and characteristics to the NYCA 500 miles away from New York City. For this thought experiment I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour in this region would be at a production percentile 25% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. I believe that there is higher level of spatial correlation than those who believe that the wind is always blowing somewhere acknowledge. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 65th percentile I presume that 500 miles away the wind resource will be at the 90th percentile. Because I believe that wind in all regions of a similar size to New York will exhibit the same wind distribution pattern, a key takeaway is that wind resources 500 miles away are insufficient to always provide support when power outside the NYCA is needed. The 500-mile resources only cover the NYCA deficit down to 55th NYCA percentile corresponding to the 500-mile 80th percentile. We must go out at least another 500 miles for reliable power.
Table 4: Wind Resource Availability from 10,000 MW of Turbines 500 Miles from NYC
Table 5 provides an estimate of the additional wind generated capacity needed outside the control area in an area 1000 miles away from New York City. I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour would be at a production percentile 50% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 50th percentile I presume that 1000 miles away the wind resource will be at the maximum level of 86%. Importantly, this assumption is the same as assuming there is no correlation between NYCA wind and 1000- mile wind. I do assume that the correlation has the same directionality. In other words, winds in both regions go down at the same time. Of course, it is more complicated because “somewhere else” winds could go up when NYCA winds go down. In order to address that issue an analysis for the entire onshore and offshore wind resource availability is needed.
The 1000-mile resource availabilities s cover the NYCA deficit down to 25th NYCA percentile and the 1000-mile 75th percentile so we must go out another 500 miles to assure replacement of the existing fossil generation.
Table 5:Wind Resource Availability from 10,000 MW of Turbines 1000 Miles from NYC
Table 6 provides an estimate of the additional wind generated capacity needed within NYCA and the 500- and 1000-mile resource areas in an area 1500 miles away from New York City. I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour would be at a production percentile 75% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 5th percentile I presume that 1000 miles away the wind resource will be at the 80th percentile. Even the addition of these resources is insufficient to cover all the power needed by New York City existing fossil resources. However, it is so close that adding another 1,049 MW of capacity in any of the regions would assure that New York City’s existing fossil generation could be replaced by resources where” the wind is always blowing”.
Table 6:Wind Resource Availability 1500 Miles from NYC
Discussion
The forgoing analysis confirms that the wind is indeed always blowing somewhere and that wind energy resources could replace the existing fossil generation in New York City as suggested by Howarth and others However, just because it is possible does not mean it is feasible. The fatal flaw is that New York City requires dedicated resources to replace existing generation when it is needed to keep the lights on. This is particularly important because the high pressure systems that characterize low wind availability over large areas also are associated with hottest and coldest periods of the year when the electric load peaks and the need for reliable power is the greatest.
Existing fossil generation capacity in New York City totals 9,026 MW. New York’s Climate Act projected onshore and offshore wind planned capacity is 31,762 MW. Relying on wind only requires another 30,000 MW located “somewhere else”. The fatal flaw to the wind blowing “somewhere else” argument for New York City is that those resources must be dedicated to New York City. The idea that anyone could afford to build 10,000 MW and 500 mile transmission lines for use as backup that will only be used 65% of the time, another 10,000 MW and 1,000 mile transmission lines for backup 50% of the time, and another 10,000 MW with 1,00 mile transmission lines for backup 25% of the time is disconnected from reality.
Of course, there are suggestions that the surplus power could be stored in batteries or used to make “green hydrogen” to address the low wind availability problem. However, Howarth claimed that New York “could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro” and that “it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago) and that that it could be cost effective”. This simple analysis suggests otherwise.
I agree with Francis Menton who has argued that we need a demonstration project to prove all the wind, solar, and energy storage components necessary for a zero-emissions electric grid that does not rely on nuclear power can work. In addition, I believe that a comprehensive analysis of wind and solar resource availability across the continent that addresses the correlation and energy density deficiencies of wind and solar is also needed. Based on my work, I think that this sort of analysis would show the need for far more resources than anyone is contemplating at this time.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
Dead whales keep washing up on the US Atlantic coast. While radical climate activists like Extinction Rebellion insist that their motivations are selfless, their advocacy of a technology that threatens the hoary bat and golden eagle with extinction betrays something closer to the opposite.
A critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and calf. Photo credit: NOAA.
The only thing dumber than onshore wind energy is offshore wind energy. The good news for ratepayers, taxpayers, birds, bats, landscapes, viewsheds, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, is that both sectors are getting hammered by market forces that make their projects uneconomic.
On Monday, Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola, announced that it was abandoning the 804-megawatt Park City Wind project offshore Connecticut because the project was “unfinanceable.” In a statement that includes a marvelous but unintended pun, the company blamed:
Unprecedented economic headwinds facing the industry including record inflation, supply chain disruptions, and sharp interest rate hikes, the aggregate impact of which rendered the Park City Wind project unfinanceable under its existing contracts.
Avangrid will pay a $16 million penalty to cancel the contract to sell electricity from the offshore wind project to Connecticut. The move is the latest blow to the Biden Administration’s plans to construct 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind on the East Coast over the next several years. In August, Shell and Ocean Winds North America agreed to pay $60 million to cancel contracts to sell power to Massachusetts from the proposed 2,400-megawatt SouthCoast Wind project. In July, Avangrid agreed to pay $48 million to cancel its contract with Massachusetts to sell power from the proposed 1,200-megawatt Commonwealth Wind project. Also in July, Rhode Island Energy announced it was canceling a power purchase agreement with Ørsted and Eversource on the 884-megawatt Revolution Wind project because the power from the offshore facility was too “too expensive for customers to bear.”
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This news shouldn’t be surprising. Offshore wind energy has always been insanely expensive. Indeed, the only method of generating power that’s more expensive than offshore wind is by burning currency in a power plant’s boiler. One of the main reasons offshore wind is so expensive (aside from the corrosive effects of salt water) is its high resource intensity. As I noted in my August 13 Substack, “The Power Of Power Density,” offshore wind requires vast amounts of copper, manganese, zinc, and other critical metals and minerals.
The levelized cost of electricity of a subsidized US offshore wind project has increased to $114.20 per megawatt-hour in 2023, up almost 50% from 2021 levels in nominal terms, according to BloombergNEF calculations. Increases in capex and opex have added $16.90/MWh to the LCOE. The higher cost of capital, thanks to interest rate hikes, has increased levelized costs by another $27.20/MWh, assuming project owners continue to expect to make a 5-percentage-point premium over their cost of debt.
Further, BNEF pointed out that even “a 40% investment tax credit benefit” due to the Inflation Reduction Act will only help “offset a minor share of these cost increases.” The article included the graphic below on the soaring cost of capital.
The cancellations of these offshore wind projects are welcome news for conservationists and commercial fishermen, who have been fighting offshore wind plans for years. About five dozen whales have washed ashore on the East Coast this year alone. Those whale deaths have coincided with the increased boat activity and high-decibel sonar mapping in the region being performed by offshore wind developers. As I reported here in January, the locations for the offshore wind projects are often on top of, or adjacent to, known habitat for the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis). In that article, I published a pair of maps. I wrote:
The maps clearly show that the offshore wind projects being approved by the Biden Administration could be built right on top of the habitat of the North Atlantic Right Whale, a species that is seeing huge population losses. Over the past decade or so, the whale’s population has plunged by about 26% and there are only about 70 breeding females left.
A dead 28 foot endangered right whale calf was found in the waters off of Chatham, Massachusetts. Researchers plan on performing a necropsy on the whale on Thursday, May 6, 2016. (David G. Curran)
“Additional noise, vessel traffic and habitat modifications due to offshore wind development will likely cause added stress that could result in additional population consequences to a species that is already experiencing rapid decline.” The author of the letter was Sean Hayes, the chief of the protected species branch at the NOAA’s National Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Hayes said that disturbance to the whales’ foraging areas “could have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species.”
For more on the whale story, I highly recommend you watch the new film, Thrown To The Wind, which stars my friend, Lisa Linowes. (Lisa has been on the Power Hungry Podcast twice. Her most recent appearance was in June.) Acoustician Robert Rand also plays a prominent role in the film. His recordings of whale noises and the subsea noise being created by the ships doing high-decibel sonar mapping for the wind industry, are among the key moments in the film.
The documentary, directed and produced by Jonah Markowitz, is about 28 minutes long. It’s well-shot and edited. Author Michael Shellenberger and his colleague at Public, Leighton Woodhouse are the executive producers. The film shows how federal officials and NGOs have repeatedly ignored the danger offshore wind development poses to whales. And they’ve done so in order to facilitate massive federal tax giveaways to the mostly foreign companies, like Avangrid, who have been pushing offshore wind projects.
Meanwhile, NextEra Energy has seen its stock price hammered. The Florida-based company, the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, has used hardball legal tactics against rural communities across rural America as part of an effort to force those communities to accept wind projects. Its stock price plummeted after its subsidiary, NextEra Energy Partners LP, slashed its annual growth target. Over the past month, NextEra Energy Partners’ stock price has fallen by more than half and the parent company’s stock is down by about 22% over the past ten days.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “rising interest rates are challenging wind and solar developers and blunting a tidal wave of government subsidies for green proejcts. Wind, solar, and other renewable projects involve high upfront expenditures, making them extremely sensitive to borrowing costs.” The article continued, “NextEra is a bellwether holding for clean-energy investors.” On Tuesday, Bloomberg’s Liam Denning wrote a piece headlined, “NextEra’s Rout Spells Trouble For Renewables.” And to borrow Avangrid’s phrase, more “economic headwinds” are ahead.
In June, the International Energy Agency reported that the cost of large-scale solar and wind power jumped by about 20% last year. As seen in the graphic above, LevelTen Energy recently found that the agreed price on power purchase agreements for wind and solar projects more than doubled between 2020 and the second quarter of 2023. Last month, the British government got no bids for new offshore wind projects. According to the BBC, the government blamed a “global rise” in inflation impacting supply chains had “presented challenges for projects.”
Who knew that inflation and high interest rates were good for whales, birds, bats, seascapes, and rural landscapes?
The Atlantic coastal states are painting themselves into a financial corner with offshore wind targets and mandates. These purchase requirements may be creating a seller’s market for offshore power providers. Even worse, given that there are only a handful of developers it may well become an oligopoly market. If so then the question is how high the prices to the states will go?
This alarming possibility is in sharp contrast to how the situation is being reported. Some developers have bought out their existing power purchase (supply) agreements as uneconomical. In New York the State rejected a large scale request from a bunch of developers for price increases averaging over 50%, on the grounds that it violated their competitive procurement policy.
These events have been reported as serious setbacks for the industry, but in every case the developers are expected to rebid the PPAs at much higher prices. In fact these States are rushing to get new procurements underway. Other states are doing likewise.
The New York developers can hardly be expected to bid lower than they already asked for, as that would suggest their ask was dishonest. They may well bid higher, arguing that their costs have continued to increase. Developers for other states are likely to want similar amounts.
The driver here may be the huge targets already set by the states. Reports often cite the Biden target of 30,000 MW but the combined state targets are much bigger. Just New York, New Jersey and Virginia sum to over the Biden target. The combined targets from Maine to North Carolina exceed a whopping 50,000 MW of offshore wind capacity.
Given the huge targets the question is how high a price will these states eat? If I were the developers I would come in very high. As the saying goes, it is easy to go down but hard to go up.
Not only is it a mandated seller’s market, it has the makings of an oligopoly. These are short term procurements so the only viable bidders are those ready to build. That is a very small number of developers, perhaps a dozen or so, if that. For each state there may only be a very small number that can deliver to them.
There are lots of leases but it takes 5 years or more to get to the construction stage. Even though the Environmental Impact Statements are a cruel joke on the environment, they still require a lot of research. Smoke and mirrors take time to build.
So I would not be surprised if the bids on the first state’s procurement were very high and they kept getting higher, state by state and procurement by procurement. Of course the states will scream and squawk. They may even reject these high prices at first, but they have huge targets and mandates to meet. The developers are mostly big, global companies so they can afford to take their time, holding out for their high prices.
This particular issue storm is going to be very interesting. Nor will it be over quickly. Green politics meets green business head on. We are talking about something like $200 billion in offshore wind projects. A titanic struggle.
Of course it is possible the states will simply ditch the targets, or slip them harmlessly into the future, so they can repeatedly reject the high bids. This might even wipe out offshore wind, which is what it deserves. Watching that happen, perhaps even helping it along, could be great fun.
Stay tuned to CFACT as this wacky green drama unfolds.
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an inDr. David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT.
As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues.
His specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment.
As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning.
This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles.
Many recent examples can be found at https://www.cfact.org/author/dwojick/ Often working as a consultant on understanding complex issues, Dr. Wojick’s numerous clients have included think tanks, trade associations, businesses and government agencies.
Examples range from CFACT to the Chief of Naval Research and the Energy Department’s Office of Science.
He has served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and the staff of the Naval Research Laboratory.
He is available for confidential consulting, research and writing.
Emma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive of Energy UK, addressed the audience at the Energy UK Annual Conference, highlighting the broader challenges affecting the energy sector.
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“The costs of projects have gone up by as much as 40% – such that no offshore wind developers could bid into the government’s most recent renewables auction. And hanging over all of this, the havoc that rising temperatures and extreme weather are already inflicting on countries and people across the world.”
Ms Pinchbeck said the UK needs “a power sector two to three times the size of the one today to power that future economy and to build five times the amount of infrastructure in the decade ahead as in the previous three.”
A power sector three times the size of today, providing the same energy as today, is not a good thing, it would be an economic disaster. Consumers at best would receive the same electricity as today, but they would have to pay three times the wage costs of today’s electricity sector. On what planet would this be a good thing for consumers?
If British consumers genuinely want affordable zero carbon power, and protection from wild fluctuations in global energy prices, the only viable option is to copy the French nuclear program.
France is the only major country in the world which successfully decarbonised most of their electricity sector, without the help of a fortunate abundance of hydroelectricity. Nuclear generates just under 70% of French electricity. And best of all, from a consumer point of view, nuclear plants are shielded from global energy price fluctuations, because unlike fossil fuel plants which require continuous refuelling, nuclear plants only need to be refuelled every two years. Even better, most of the next batch of fuel can be recovered from the spent fuel. Two years between refuelling cycles is plenty of lead time to secure a good deal and ensure affordable continuity of power generation.
In Episode 15 of “Conservation Nation,” host @GabriellaHoffman travels to New England and the Jersey Shore to find out if ocean industrialization – namely offshore wind energy development – is imperiling marine life including endangered North Atlantic right whales. Filmed and edited by @itsmadisonhughes.
Vertical axis wind turbines generator farm for renewable sustainable and alternative energy production along coast baltic sea near Denmark. Eco power, ecology.
Things are looking bad for offshore wind in America (which makes me happy). On one hand, opposition is growing. On the other, the cost crisis is driving prices way up. Whether the offshore US boom will bust remains to be seen, but it is certainly possible. Here’s hoping.
Bad news for the industry is coming in daily, so there is too much to report. Here are just a few samples to give the flavor of the debacle in progress.
In New Jersey, we get this dramatic report of a poll: “Support for Wind Energy Plunges”.
Here is their summary: “A majority of New Jerseyans continue to favor the development of offshore wind energy, but the current level of support is far below the widespread backing it has received in polls over the prior 15 years. The Monmouth University Poll finds that 4 in 10 residents think wind farms could hurt the state’s summer tourism economy, and just under half see a connection between wind energy development and the recent spate of whales washing up on New Jersey beaches. Few see wind energy leading to major job growth in the state.”
The number of New Jersey residents who support offshore wind fell by more than 20 percent since 2019, from 76 percent four years ago to just over half (54 percent) now, and the number of those opposing offshore wind has climbed from 15 percent to 40 percent since 2019.
New Jersey is one of the two states that hold statewide elections in off-years, so theirs is coming in November. Offshore wind has now become an election issue. CFACT has been very active there.
Of course, the developers say we opponents of wind are lying. What else can they say, since they have no real defense? Here is a good example: “Support for Offshore Wind in New Jersey Drops, Industry Points to Effect of Misinformation”.
It is the usual nonsense. We opponents of offshore wind technology are all shills of big oil; these monsters are needed to stop global warming; we don’t understand that the technology is harmless, etc. Pure rhetorical junk.
Further north, the entire Fisherman’s Advisory Board has resigned from the Rhode Island offshore approval decision process. This is a big deal because the Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board is an integral part of the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP), which is a State process hailed as the “gold standard for offshore wind development”. Rhode Island is allowed to apply this process to certain offshore wind projects in federal waters that impact Rhode Island residents and industries, most importantly the fishing industry. It falls under the Coastal Zone Management Act through a process called “consistency review”, where a state can have a say in projects in federal waters if they affect the state. In that case, the state can require that the project be held to certain state CZMA standards.
Here is the scathing first paragraph of the “We quit” letter: “We, the undersigned members of the Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board (FAB), hereby resign and refuse to participate any longer in the Rhode Island Ocean SAMP process. It has become abundantly clear that the Rhode Island CRMC (Coastal Resources Management Council) has made deference to offshore wind developers its top priority regardless of the requirements of the Ocean SAMP, the cost to the environment, or the impacts to Rhode Island’s fishing industry. In staff’s own words, the purpose of the FAB/CRMC review process of offshore wind projects is to move the permits forward. We as members of the FAB thought that the purpose of FAB/CRMC review was to ensure that offshore wind projects conformed to the requirements and restrictions of the Ocean SAMP. We were wrong. The Ocean SAMP process has been reduced to mere political theater, to which we refuse to lend any further credence by our presence.”
For the full letter, see “Fishermen’s Advisory Board Done Playing Role in CRMC’s Political Theater”.
In between Rhode Island and New Jersey, Equinor and BP are seeking a whopping 54% hike in New York offshore wind power payments. The price hike for Empire Wind 1 would be $159.64 per Megawatt-hour (MWh) from $118.56; for Empire Wind 2, the bump would be $177.84 per MWh from $107.50, and for Beacon Wind, the enhanced price would be $190.82 from $118.00. These are huge increases.
Back in New Jersey, the biggest Atlantic wind developer — Ørsted — is suing Cape May County and Atlantic City for not issuing permits they have vowed not to do. Speaking of Ørsted:
“Orsted (stock price) plunges 20% on risk of $2.3 billion in US impairments”.
They state that, given huge increases in costs, they can’t make money on the project. For now, they are not walking away from their numerous US projects but will reconsider long-term plans by the end of the year.
Back in Rhode Island: “Second Revolution Wind Project Rejected by Rhode Island Energy”.
Utility says higher interest rates, increased costs of capital, and supply chain expenses made the project unattractive”.
The utility does not want to pay the increased price. Imagine that!
The wind bubble may be bursting. We need to keep the pressure on (to mix metaphors). That the industry is struggling is now clear to the financial community. When stock prices sink or product prices soar, that triggers various adverse actions.
Here’s hoping for a cascade of grief for offshore wind development. It serves no useful purpose, is environmentally destructive, and costs a growing fortune.
Stay tuned to CFACT as this hopeful drama unfolds.
Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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