One colleague contacted me regarding his MP, who is vice-chair of the Climate All Party Parliamentary Group. She supports the Net Zero agenda and agrees with plans to massively increase offshore wind capacity.
He asked me to prepare a summary of the “No” case, to put alongside her version.
I have therefore prepared a Factsheet, which I show below.
It might come in handy if anybody else wishes to grill their MP!
OFFSHORE WIND POWER FACTSHEET
COSTS
The new Administrative Strike Price for offshore wind is £73/MWh at 2012 prices. This equals £100.27 at today’s prices. By the time new projects are commissioned they will be much higher because of indexation. (1)
The market price of electricity was £78.22/MWh in October, according to OFCOM. (2)
According to the latest DESNZ data, the levelised cost of CCGT gas-fired electricity is currently £54/MWh, excl Carbon Tax. (3)
New offshore wind power is clearly much more expensive than gas, even before taking into account the extra billions in wider system costs – system balancing, standby generation, upgrades to transmission grids, constraint payments, etc.
Existing offshore wind power is even more expensive, averaging £176/MWh this year for those generators with CfDs. (4)
Currently, subsidies to offshore wind are costing electricity users £4.8 billion a year. (5)
The cost of offshore wind power is so high that many projects off the US east coast have been cancelled because they are not viable
Because CfDs are inflation indexed each year, these costs will continue to rise. This will lock households into permanently high and increasing electricity bills.
UNRELIABILITY
According to research, wind power, (both onshore and offshore) produces less than 20% of its capacity for 20 weeks a year, and less than 10% for 9 weeks. (6)
Under government plans, all power will be decarbonised by 2035, leaving us with the following capacity in broad terms under current plans:
Offshore Wind – 56 GW
Onshore Wind – 28 GW
Solar Power – 70 GW
Nuclear – 5 GW
Biomass/Hydro – 10 GW
Acccording to the National Grid’s Future Scenarios, peak demand will rise to 98 GW in 2035, because of the electrification of transport and heating. (7)
When wind power is only supplying 10% of its capacity, there will clearly be a massive shortage of power, in the order of 70 GW. (Bear in mind that solar power only supplies 3% of its capacity in winter).
There’s no real argument in favour of offshore wind power, and plenty of serious arguments against. Start with the absolutely staggering cost, which has major proponents demanding even greater subsidies from taxpayers and/or higher prices in the guaranteed power contracts they ink with governments. With governments increasingly refusing to play ball, proponents are simply dropping their grand offshore projects.
The knock-on effect for wind turbine manufacturers such as Siemens is little short of catastrophic: Siemens Energy shares plummeted 40% last week, slashing 3 billion euros ($3.16 billion) off its market value, after Siemens revealed it was demanding billions in government backed guarantees from the German government. In short, things have never looked worse.
Then there is the mounting opposition to offshore wind, coming from sensible energy advocates, situated onshore. As to which, here’s a story from the Great Lakes Advocate about plans to spear hundreds of these things off the New South Wales coast.
Dr Gillespie recently joined close to 2000 people, and addressed an anti-wind farm rally in Port Stephens Great Lakes Advocate 22 October 2023
Wind farms are not the solution for retiring baseload generators, Member for Lyne, David Gillespie says.
Sharing his opposition to a proposed offshore windfarm in Port Stephens, Dr Gillespie said they would increase grid instability, destroy the environment and result in an increase in electricity costs.
He said this trillion dollar-plus energy plan was something the country could not afford.
Dr Gillespie recently joined close to 2000 people, and addressed an anti-wind farm rally in Port Stephens.
“I can assure all of the people who have expressed their concerns about this project that I am absolutely opposed to this development which will have a significant negative impact on our region and the people of Australia,” Dr Gillespie said.
Both locally and in many locations where these developments have been proposed, communities continue to oppose them for many good and practical reasons, and it is extremely disappointing the lack of consultation in the preparation of these projects, he said.
He said the Port Stephens project would pose a serious navigational risk for local and international shipping and boating, as well as the wind farms during storms and tempest.
The feasibility studies and the eventual project would detrimentally impact whale and dolphin (cetacean) acoustics, migration and pod behaviour, while marine bird life would suffer like they have on land-based wind farms, he said.
Dr Gillespie said there would be enormous financial cost on the multi-million dollar local commercial fishing industry, commercial freighters, blue water and the tourism economy.
“On land, the significant environmental and aesthetic impact will be felt with the connecting, high-voltage grid, which is likely to travel through the pristine Great Lakes and Myall Coast native bush, environmental and agricultural land.
“This will have a very significant cost, which electricity payers will subsidise through higher grid and electricity prices.
“The whole proposal is outrageously uneconomic and relies on subsidies via Large Scale Renewable Energy Certificates, which you pay on your rising electricity bills.”
He said new baseload replacement power was urgently required to create 28,000 kilometres of new power lines through the countryside.
The landscape would resemble an industrial park of wind turbines and solar panels.
“This trillion dollar-plus energy plan is something we simply cannot afford.”
Dr Gillespie said existing power stations should be maintained until they can be replaced by new zero-emission nuclear technology.
As coal-fired power plants are retired, they could be replaced at those sites with modern modular nuclear power plants which can be plugged into the existing grid which will avoid the economic an environmental mess the federal government will create if they continue to pursue their 100 per cent renewable agenda, Dr Gillespie said.
“I will be continuing to raise this matter in parliament and do all I can to stop it and I am encouraging everyone in the community to hold all federal and state Labor ministers and MPs, Greens and Independents to account for their failure to listen and apply simple commonsense.” Great Lakes Advocate
The Scoping Plan is the framework for how New York will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve net-zero emissions, increase renewable energy use, and ensure all communities equitably benefit in the clean energy transition.
Consider Manhattan Contrarian as your go-to source for the latest on New York’s progress toward green energy utopia.
Can you remember all the way back to December 19, 2022? That’s the day that New York’s Climate Action Council officially adopted its “Scoping Plan,” telling us all how we are going to achieve, among other goals, 70% of statewide electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and a zero-emissions electricity system by 2040. The biggest part of the grand plan consists of some 9,000 MW (nameplate capacity) of offshore wind turbines to be built by 2035. As of the time of the Scoping Plan, the state claimed that some 4,300 MW out of the 9,000 MW of upcoming offshore wind projects were under “active development.”
On the very day that the Scoping Plan got finalized, I had a post titled “On To The Great Future Of Offshore Wind Power.” That post noted that even of the 4.300 MW of offshore wind supposedly under “active development,” not one turbine was operating, or even under construction. Several developers had made bids that had been accepted by the state, and some of those developers were getting kind of close to applying for permits. My prediction was: “Expect long delays and demands for lots more money before anything gets built.” Boy, can I call these things.
Shall we check back in for the latest information?
Just ten days ago, on October 5, I had an update on offshore wind developments throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England. For New York, the news was that in September essentially all the developers of the New York projects in “active development” had demanded massive price increases, ranging from about 30% at the low end to almost 65% at the high end. The new prices being demanded by the developers would now be between $140-190 per MWh, which would be at least double to more than triple the prices charged by new natural gas plants.
So how did that go over? To its credit, the state Public Service Commission wasted no time in rejecting the price hike demands of the developers. On October 12 the Commission issued its decision on the Petitions of the developers for price relief. Excerpt from the press release:
The New York State Public Service Commission (Commission) today denied petitions filed by a group of offshore wind developers and a state renewable energy trade association seeking billions of dollars in additional funding from consumers for four proposed offshore wind projects and 86 land-based renewable projects. In denying financial relief, the Commission opted to preserve the robust competitive bidding process that provides critically needed renewable energy resources to New York in the fairest and most cost-effective manner that protects consumers.
OK then, what happens next? The New York Times has a write-up here on October 12. The Times quotes the Chair of the PSC, one Rory Christian, as standing up for the sanctity of the public bidding process:
Rory Christian, the chairman of the Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, said that providing relief to the winning bidders would set an untenable precedent. “Taking exception today almost guarantees that we will be asked to do this again in the future,” he said. Mr. Christian added that the state’s ratepayers, who would have borne the cost, could not serve as an “unlimited piggy bank” for companies to tap. “We have a deal,” he said to the developers, calling on them to stand by the terms they agreed to.
Well, Rory, I’ve got news for you: the developers aren’t going to honor the deal. You’re going to have to hold a new auction. And the prices that will be bid will be as high or higher than those just demanded by these developers.
Oh, and then don’t expect any new round of accepted bids to stick either. The developers will come back again and again for new rounds of price increases. What’s to stop them? After all, they have you over a barrel. You have a “Climate Act” and a “Scoping Plan” that basically require you to build out a grid powered by “renewables,” whether that is feasible or not, and then limit your options to mostly offshore wind.
And meanwhile, until the next round of bids is held, we’re back to square one. We have a statutory requirement of 70% of our electricity from “renewables” by 2030, and a “Scoping Plan” that sees that goal being achieved largely through offshore wind turbines. And we have not one single operating offshore wind turbine, nor any under construction, nor, after the recent contract repudiations, any actively moving through the permitting process. At least for now, the whole thing is dead in the water.
The Times quotes a guy named Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance:
[T]he commission’s decision “puts these projects in serious jeopardy and deals a potentially fatal blow to the progress these projects have made. . . .”
By the way, the prices recently demanded by the offshore wind developers, in the range of $140-190/MWh, do not include anything for the transmission upgrades needed to deliver this power into the grid, nor anything for the storage or back-up needed to transform intermittent wind power into a useful 24/7 resource. The sooner we pull the plug on this whole endeavor, the better. But we are now only in the first phases of the collapse.
UPDATE, October 16, 2023: Meanwhile, I should have mentioned that New York City apartment buildings remain under a mandate from “Local Law 97” to convert to electric heat by 2030 or face large fines. The electricity is supposed to come from the offshore wind farms that, for the time being, are completely suspended. Go to the link in the sidebar to listen to Jane’s podcast on this subject.
BOEM pretends it knows the noise impairment levels for Right Whales but hides its own admitted lack of knowledge on the issue and also obscures its ongoing research that will not be completed for several years.
The Biden Administration is rushing headlong to start the massive construction of offshore wind power projects off the East Coast. The wind industry calls these installations “farms”.
In no way, shape, or form do they resemble bucolic farms?
They are massive, noisy, complicated, metal, concrete, and fiberglass factories consisting of thousands of steel towers, all taller than the Washington Monument, topped by fiberglass blades longer than a football field, and surrounded by tons of rock required to prevent ocean scouring.
Even if one subscribes to the absurd theory that carbon dioxide controls the climate, these factories will, when considering the energy and materials required to construct them, result in zero reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere and have zero impact on world climate.
Repeat: zero reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere and zero impact on climate.
But vendors believe there could be a lot of money to be made in this business, and the wind industry has been effective in sprinkling seed money into the coffers of politicians and so-called environmental groups to support the legislation necessary to pay for this boondoggle – money which will ultimately be derived from hapless electricity consumers who want nothing more than cheap, reliable electricity to power their daily lives, and who will find out too late in the game that offshore wind will be neither cheap, reliable, or environmentally friendly.
Fortunately, several citizen groups have been formed that are vigorously opposing this massive industrialization of the ocean. The two leading organizations are Save Right Whales Coalition, led by Lisa Linowes: https://saverightwhales.org/, and Save Long Beach Island, led by Dr. Robert Stern https://www.savelbi.org. In addition, Michael Shellenberger has produced a terrific documentary, Thrown to the Wind, which provides an eye-opening view into the real world of noise produced by so-called survey ships. Save LBI has also initiated litigation in New Jersey federal court seeking to revoke the permits issued by BOEM authorizing this preconstruction activity.
Officially listed as an endangered species by all State and federal governments, the Right Whale falls under the protection of both the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. These statutes require wind energy companies to obtain an “incidental take” permit for the Right Whales and other protected marine mammals while engaged in pre-construction site assessment work, which consists of sonar blasting the ocean floor to determine the placement of the wind turbines.
Last year, BOEM issued a dozen “take” permits to different wind developers who spent the winter months sonar blasting off the East Coast.
Between December 2022 and May of this year, 60 large whales, including one Right Whale, washed up dead on the beaches of NY, NJ, and VA. BOEM put together a “hastily called ” news conference to counter the outcry from the public over this outbreak of dead whales.
BOEM seemed absolutely sure there was no connection between the dead whales and sonar blasting: “At this point, there is no scientific evidence”, BOEM claimed in carefully worded lawyer jargon, ” that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales”. It concluded, ” There are no known links between recent large whale mortalities and ongoing offshore wind surveys”.
But what BOEM did not mention, or even reference, was the fact that it has funded a program currently underway that is designed precisely to answer the question of the extent to which sonar noise adversely impacts Baleen whales. Nor did BOEM mention that it had virtually no knowledge of the impact of sonar noise on large whales when it authorized the IHAs that permitted sonar mapping off the East Coast.
The program, termed “Auditory Weighting Function for Low Frequency Whales,” consists of three studies that examine the underwater noise abilities of the minke and humpback whales as proxies for Right Whales and other Baleen whales.
The program, begun in 2021, contains some startling admissions. First, BOEM is very clear in admitting that it does not know how sonar noise impacts “low frequency” whales. “The hearing abilities of ‘low frequency’ whales”, it explained, “remain one of the ‘major unknowns’ as the regulatory community has tried to deal with the effects of noise on marine mammals.” It added, “This information is imperative for BOEM to assess the potential effects of noise-producing actions (from both oil and gas and renewable energy) on these species, many of which are highly threatened”. It further conceded, ” the data need is national information on just one species of baleen whale which will significantly advance the current understanding (which is almost nonexistent) ……”.
Second, it acknowledged that “we are required to know this information for analyses under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.” It further explains that ” the lack of meaningful, validated data for LF whales has made it extremely challenging for NMFS and others to derive meaningful regulatory ‘not to exceed thresholds’ for noise sources, as required under the MMPA and ESA”.
This means that the program, when completed, will provide guidance for the entire government concerning acceptable noise levels for both oil and gas and offshore wind development.
So why hasn’t BOEM acknowledged that it does not know noise impairment levels for large whales, and why hasn’t it revealed the existence of this program, which will produce the information it is “required to know” under the MMPA and ESA?
The reason is obvious. The studies are being conducted right now and have not yet been completed. The final report and conclusions of the studies are not scheduled for completion until June 2025, almost two years from now.
BOEM is obviously hiding the existence of these critical studies. BOEM does not yet know the impact of sonar signals on Baleen whales, it is very clear that under the Marine Mammal Protection Act BOEM is required to rely on ” the best scientific information available” in crafting underwater noise regulations. In its rush to authorize offshore wind construction before the elections in November 2024, BOEM is relying on guesswork and outdated guesswork, at that. The Federal Code of Regulations makes it very clear that BOEM cannot hide behind the excuse that this critical information is not available when it knows full well that the data will be derived from ongoing studies that are organized and funded by BOEM itself.
At a minimum, this set of facts would support a temporary injunction prohibiting BOEM from issuing further IHAs until the studies have been completed and the data has been incorporated into definitive regulations. Any final Environmental Impact Statement issued by the EPA that fails to incorporate the data to be derived from these latest studies will be de facto misleading and de jure unlawful.
When BOEM claims that “there is no evidence” linking the recent outbreak of whale deaths due to sonar testing, it is engaging in obvious and easily provable deception. This is a classic case of gaslighting. BOEM cannot sweep its “knowledge gap” concerning Right Whale noise impairment under the rug and expect the courts to approve any further offshore wind development.
Johnson has spent the last four decades working in the public and private sectors in Virginia, primarily in the fields of project finance and maritime transportation.
He began his career in public service as Chairman of the Board of the Virginia Port Authority. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, as a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and most recently, as Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.
In that capacity, he became knowledgeable in the field of climate and its impact on the Great Lakes. He currently serves on CFACT’s Board of Advisors.
Johnson holds a B.A. degree from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.
The wind industry is determined to destroy the marine environment along the Atlantic coast; its fishermen are even more determined to stop them.
As whale carcasses mount up along the coastline, those who depend on the sea for their livelihoods have turned on the offshore wind industry and its government enablers, with a vengeance.
As Josh Christenson reports below, the wind industry and its spin doctors have a whale-sized revolt and their hands, one which won’t be placated with the industry’s usual soft soap, gaslighting approach.
RI fishermen’s board resigns en masse over Biden admin-backed offshore wind farm: ‘Wholesale ocean destruction’ New York Post Josh Christenson 5 September 2023
A plan backed by the Biden administration to OK a string of wind farms off Rhode Island has prompted every member of a fishing regulatory board in the state to resign.
The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse Friday to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project after the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council approved the third offshore wind farm in two years off the Ocean State’s waters.
The project falls under President Biden’s executive order authorizing his Interior Department to double US offshore wind capacity by 2030. With the project’s approval, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is on track to finish reviews for 16 wind farms by 2025.
But foes including the fishing board say the Sunrise plan ignores environmental regulations and anglers’ concerns
In a letter addressed to CRMC Executive Director Jeff Willis, the nine-member fishermen’s panel said its regulatory role had been reduced to “political theater,” as the state continues to defer to developers such as the Danish wind giant Orsted.
“We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction,” wrote board members Lanny Dellinger, Christopher Brown, Michael Marchetti, Greg Mataronas, Chris Lee, Brian Thibeault, Meghan Lapp, Richard Hittinger and Rick Bellavance.
“Rhode Island is supposed to be the Ocean State, not the Windmill State.”
The board said it was drawing specific attention to the project’s violations of state environmental protection requirements, as well as warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about its effects on Atlantic cod.
A letter addressed two days earlier to Willis from another board member, who also chairs the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, raised concerns about the effects on recreational tuna fishing in the region.
“Our members are shocked at the scale of the current development now occurring on their fishing grounds but are being told that permitting is complete and there is no way for them to have input at this late date,” Hittinger said.
He added that the “one-sided push by developers” ensures that environmental considerations will continue to be ignored, calling the decision, “effectively a rubber stamp of the political desires of Washington, DC,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.
CRMC officials responded by saying the board members had “provided valuable information and insight” but that their resignations would not deter the project from meeting its federal mandates under the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972.
“The CRMC remains hopeful that the Rhode Island fishing community will continue to participate in the public process for reviewing offshore wind energy projects, as well as any other projects affecting the fishery resources of the State,” a rep said in a statement.
Rhode Island approved Sunrise Wind just weeks after the Biden administration gave final approval to the 65-turbine Revolution Wind project after a permit from the CRMC. In April, the administration also approved the 12-turbine South Fork Wind project after the CRMC gave a thumbs-up to that project, too.
All three projects are joint enterprises between Orsted, one of the world’s largest offshore wind developer, which is headquartered in Denmark, and the New England utility Eversource.
The approval pace has alarmed fishermen as well as local environmental groups, who say the renewable energy initiatives will eventually build around 1,000 turbines in the waters south of Rhode Island covering roughly 1,400 square miles — larger than the Ocean State itself.
The projects will cause major disruptions to commercial and recreational fishing, says one of those groups, Green Oceans, while pointing to one of the BOEM’s own assessments.
The agency’s draft environmental impact statement for the Revolution Wind project stated that there would be “no measurable influence on climate change” either.
The first offshore wind farms in the US were built off Rhode Island’s Block Island in 2016 and have also been correlated with a surge in whale deaths.
Through increased boat traffic because of construction, as well as high-decibel sonar mapping, whales are apparently being struck and killed by vessels or else disoriented and driven away from feeding grounds.
Other groups such as the Save Right Whales Coalition have noted donations from Orsted to some state environmental groups and other institutions.
In 2020, Orsted and the Revolution Wind project donated $1,250,000 to the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut to fund pro-offshore wind exhibits, the group noted in a report.
Between Dec. 1, 2022, and Aug. 25, 2023, at least 60 whale species have been found dead on the East Coast. New York Post
In the absence of endless subsidies and guaranteed, fixed-price contracts (set at ludicrously high prices), the purported economic case for wind power never, ever stacks up. And the metrics are far worse out at sea.
Notwithstanding the $billions in subsidies – gouged from taxpayers and/or lumped on power consumers’ crushing power bills – proposed projects are floundering at sea, and the major turbine manufacturers are well and truly underwater.
As John Hinderaker outlines below, throwing money at offshore wind power projects makes a cocaine habit look like a canny investment.
Offshore Follies Powerline John Hinderaker 25 June 2023
There could be a worse way to generate electricity than by implanting giant windmills in the ocean, but it is hard to think what it might be. Not surprisingly, Britain is finding its plans for offshore wind to be illusive: How Britain’s offshore wind industry ran out of puff.
Championed by politicians as a controversy-free alternative to onshore wind and solar farms, the Government wants offshore wind capacity to surge from 13 gigawatts today to 50 gigawatts by 2030.
Why giant turbines in the ocean should be controversy-free is hard to understand. In any event, things are not going well.
A string of major projects are under threat from spiralling costs, sclerotic planning rules and shrinking subsidies. Industry sources warn that it risks tilting the economics into negative territory. “Things are very hard out there right now,” one source says.
“Negative territory” in this context means that government subsidies are not large enough, and need to be increased.
The malaise is triggering fresh questions about whether the Government’s 2030 target is still achievable – and if the long–assumed maxim that offshore wind costs will keep falling can hold.
There is no significant element of offshore wind’s costs that should be expected to decline, and increasing government-driven demand for the minerals of which wind turbines consume vast amounts will inevitably cause those prices to rise.
Britain’s offshore wind industry exploded over the past decade, with most development concentrated off the east coasts of Scotland and England. Capacity has grown tenfold since 2010, when it stood at just 1.3 gigawatts, with ever-bigger turbines boosting output.
One example is Dogger Bank, a phased development in the North Sea that will eventually generate enough power for 6 million homes.
It would be more accurate to say that if completed, it will occasionally generate enough power for 6 million homes. Wind turbines create electricity 35% to 40% of the time. Most of the time, another source will need to be found.
But rising supply chain costs globally – fueled by energy prices that jumped after the Ukraine war – have slammed the breaks on this progress.
But wait! The energy prices that “jumped after the Ukraine war” were those for natural gas and gasoline. Why would that impact the supply chain for wind turbines? Can’t you just use wind energy to run the factories that produce wind turbines?
Just kidding. You can’t run a factory on electricity that is AWOL 60% to 65% of the time. Reliable energy sources will always be needed to manufacture unreliable energy sources. Although why you would want to do that is anyone’s guess.
Apparently everyone is losing money on wind turbines:
General Electric’s renewables business, which makes the 260 metre-tall Haliade X turbines used at Dogger Bank, reported a $2.2bn (£1.7bn) loss in 2022. The division has been loss-making for eight straight quarters.
Rival manufacturers Siemens Gamesa, Vestas and Nordex also posted further cumulative losses of €3bn in the same year, notes Kathryn Porter, an independent analyst at energy consultancy Watt Logic.
“There has been this narrative, that wind farm costs are falling and will keep falling, but the reality is these prices are too low.
“Turbine manufacturers have effectively been selling at a loss – and those losses have become huge now.”
Wind energy is a sinkhole for money. The only solution is more government subsidies. In that regard, the Brits are jealous of us Americans, who are going deeper into debt to keep the “green” money machine going:
Many of these problems are not unique to the UK. But they are colliding with domestic issues, including the slow planning system and shrinking British subsidies – which now look even meaner when compared to those being showered on companies in the US through Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Thanks, Joe. Another problem is that giant wind turbines anchored in the seabed don’t actually work well, even when “working” is defined as 35% production:
The “bigger is better” approach to turbines is leading to more failures, costing manufacturers more in warranty claims, Porter says. ***
In an effort to cut costs, some developers are attaching the turbines using cheaper foundations on the sea floor, the executive adds.
“Offshore wind is not the Nirvana that everybody thinks it is,” they add. “The risks are enormous. And the rewards are not very good.
“Everyone is going for the biggest turbines, the cheapest foundations, and they’ve all gone for cabling solutions that mean if you get a failure, you could lose the wind farm.”
I think that in 25 years, offshore wind will be seen as one of the worst follies in the history of technology. Even now, a few are asking good questions:
[F]or some, these problems raise much bigger questions about subsidies for offshore wind generally.
“We are 20 years on from when we started subsidising offshore wind, yet we are still having to do it”, says Porter at Watt Logic.
“If you are meant to be supporting a nascent technology until it gets to maturity, then subsidies should eventually fall to zero over time. If that is not your goal, then what is the point of these subsidies now?”
The real point is the biggest transfer of wealth in world history, but don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone to say that out loud. Powerline
Wind power is delivered chaotically, it’s costly and critically depends on the weather. So, the only purported justification is said to be a reduction of carbon dioxide gas emissions in the electricity generation sector. Putting aside whether there’s any need to do so, STT is happy to attack the myth that wind power does any such thing.
In the first of the pieces below, David Wojick tackles the myth that offshore wind power generation reduces carbon dioxide gas emissions, explaining that collapses in wind power output are met by using costly to run and highly inefficient open cycle gas turbines, ramped up to keep the grid from collapsing and the lights on when calm weather sets in. With the net result being an increase in carbon dioxide gas emissions, contrary to the purported object of the entire exercise.
In the second piece, David considers the carbon dioxide gas emissions inherent in the construction of offshore wind turbines, with a particular focus on the gargantuan monopiles (depicted above and below) that are speared deep into the ocean floor and used to keep these things upright at sea.
Offshore wind may not reduce CO2 emissions CFACT David Wojick 31 May 2023
There is a common assumption that offshore wind electricity generation greatly reduces CO2 emissions. In fact this is the primary justification for the horrendous cost and adverse impact of these offshore megaprojects.
As with many green assumptions, this may well be false. First, given the way power generation actually works the reduction in fossil fuel emissions may not be all that great. In fact offshore wind could actually increase fossil fuel emissions. This is explained below.
Let’s take New Jersey as an example because they aspire to be the leader in offshore wind development. Their stated goal is a whopping 11,000 MW of offshore generating capacity, at a cost of something like $100 billion. If reducing CO2 emissions is the justification for this incredible cost, there had better be a lot of reduction. Turns out there may be very little, which makes the project very expensive, or even an increase which would make it worse than worthless.
On the generation side there are several factors to consider. To begin with New Jersey already shut down its 2,000 MW of coal fired power so those potential emission reductions are gone. Even worse half of their present generation is nuclear, which has no CO2 emissions. So if wind replaces some nuclear output there is no reduction.
The remaining half of the generation is gas fired and here things get interesting, as well as complex.
Keep in mind that the gas fired system is designed to generate when people need electricity. Wind on the other hand generates when the wind blows. It generates most when the wind blows hard, less when it blows less, and none when it blows low. Roughly speaking output increases linearly from no power at 10 mph to full power at 30 mph.
These are sustained wind speeds, not gusts, so 30 mph is rare. On the other hand less than 10 mph is relatively common, with no power produced, sometimes for days at a time. In between what happens is that the wind and power output go up and down, up and down. A 20% change in output in an hour is common.
These irregular wind oscillations will have a profound impact on gas power emissions. This is because there are two very different kinds of gas fired power plant. These are called, respectively, the simple cycle and the combined cycle plant.
A simple cycle plant is a generator driven by a combustion turbine. This turbine is like a jet engine running on natural gas. These plants are relatively inefficient, with an efficiency of 30 to 38% depending on how old they are
Combined cycle uses a combustion turbine too, but it then uses the extremely hot exhaust to boil water that in turn runs a steam turbine generator, so there are two different generators run in combination, hence the name. Combined cycle plants are much more efficient than simple cycle at around 60%.
Simple cycle plants feature quick start so they are used mostly for meeting peak needs when power usage spikes. For this reason they are often called peakers. Peak need is unlikely to coincide with strong wind, especially heat waves and cold snaps which are often marked by very low to no wind. Both weather extremes are often caused by stagnant high pressure systems.
Thus it is unlikely that offshore wind will do much to reduce the peaker emissions. The coal emissions are gone, nuclear has no emissions and the peaker emissions mostly remain, so this just leaves the combined cycle emissions for possible reduction.
Here the constant variability of wind creates a huge obstacle to emission reduction. The problem is that the huge amount of water in the combined cycle boiler takes a long time to heat up, and once heated the combustion turbine must run flat out to keep it boiling.
This is not a rapid response technology, in fact it is designed to run more or less steadily. It cannot ramp up and down in time to match the wind’s rapidly ramping down and up.
There are two ways the combined cycle system can be run in order to supply the erratic need created by the oscillating output of the wind generators. Unfortunately both are highly inefficient, meaning a lot more gas must be burned per unit of electricity produced, which creates a lot more emissions.
One way is to keep the steam pressure up during the time the wind output is high, which means burning a lot of gas with little or no generation. The other way is to shut down the steam system and just run as a simple cycle combustion turbine. This burns a lot more gas than was the prior-to-wind case when the combined cycle unit ran relatively steadily.
In short adding a lot of intermittent offshore wind to the generation mix radically degrades the efficiency of the gas fired generation. The result is that CO2 emissions are not likely to be greatly reduced and can even increase.
What actually happens is a research question I have not seen studied. A lot depends on the specifics of the intermittency, which likely vary from year to year and place to place.
The point is that if the primary justification for building enormously expensive offshore wind megaprojects is to reduce CO2 emissions then there may be no justification. CFACT
‘Green’ industrialization greatly increases CO2 emissions CFACT David Wojick 12 June 2023
Despite calling for rapid reduction in CO2 emissions, the left is rushing green industrialization which will dramatically increase emissions for the foreseeable future. This obvious absurdity has yet to be admitted.
On the one hand, there is growing literature on the enormous material requirements required for building huge numbers of wind and solar power generating systems. Then the growing realization that gas-fired backup will keep renewable power generation CO2 emissions high. See my https://www.cfact.org/2023/05/31/offshore-wind-may-not-reduce-co2-emissions/
Combining these two factors means CO2 emissions should rise, not fall, as green industrialization proceeds. Both factors are ignored, but both are big. The energy transition increases emissions. It is that simple.
On the material side, we are talking about what I call “supply chain emissions.” It should be obvious that rebuilding the electric power system is hugely emission intensive. We are talking about a tremendous amount of mining, processing, and construction, with lots of transportation at each step.
By way of example, let’s take one of my favorites — the huge monopiles that hold up offshore wind-generating towers. In this case, we focus on New Jersey’s ridiculous goal of adding 11,000 MW of offshore wind, up from its present level of zero wind. It is ridiculous because New Jersey already has all the generating capacity it needs. Supposedly this wind power is going to make the weather better or keep it from worsening, but that is another silly topic.
These monopiles are very big. For simplicity, let’s say a steel cylinder is 30′ in diameter and 300′ long, although some are bigger. Each weighs something like 2,500 tons. It is first driven into the seafloor, then hollowed out and backfilled with concrete.
Steel and cement-making both create a lot of CO2 emissions, and there are so-called emission factors for both. Steelmaking creates about 2 tons of CO2 per ton of steel, so just producing the raw steel in one monopile puts out 5,000 tons of CO2. This does not include making the monopile, which involves a lot of shaping, cutting, welding, etc.
There is something like 15,000 tons of concrete in a finished monopile, and the chemical emission factor is about 1,250 pounds of CO2, giving around 9,000 tons of CO2 per pile. This does not include the energy required for cooking the limestone to make cement, which requires a great deal of heat.
So, simply producing the basic materials causes about 14,000 tons of CO2 per monopile. Assuming for simplicity that the average turbine is 11 MW we need 1,000 monopiles, which works out to a whopping 14,000,000 tons of CO2 just to make the steel and concrete.
This huge number does not include energy-intensive activities like mining the iron ore and limestone or cooking the latter or the numerous transportation steps along the way from mine to final erection.
For now, the steel piles are made in Europe, most likely Spain, so they must be shipped something like 5,000 miles. Many of the giant substations, each filling a flatbed ship, come from as far away as Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. Iron ore is itself a major ocean shipping commodity. So there will be a lot of transport emissions.
And this is just the monopiles. On top of these come the huge towers, turbines, and blade sets. The turbine assemblies alone are now up to 850 tons, including many tons of copper. Then too, there are thousands of miles of undersea power cables. Every generator is wired to a substation, which is then tied to massive power lines running back to shore. Plus, there will be a great deal of onshore grid development in order to handle all this new juice coming from new places.
This is emission-intensive industrialization on a grand scale. There will certainly be huge CO2 emissions for the next decade or more. What we need is supply chain emission analysis.
There is no way green industrialization of electric power can reduce emissions in the foreseeable future. CFACT
The new energy cap set by OFGEM last month, which takes effect from 1st July, is based on an average wholesale electricity price of about £150/MWh – OFGEM refuse to release the actual figure. As this is calculated from Feb to April prices, it is already out of date, so to speak.
According to Catalyst Energy, both spot and forward prices have fallen sharply since February, down to £68 and £109/MWh respectively in May:
This is confirmed by the CfD calculations for May, which give market prices for offshore wind of £80.16/MWh and £73.64/MWh for solar.
This of course means that we have now returned to the days of heavy subsidies for offshore wind power, which are earning an average strike price of £179.38/MWh, meaning that £90.1 million was paid out in subsidies last month.
We are even subsidising solar power, which earns £105.98/MWh in strike prices.
The drop in power prices is of course the direct result of lower gas prices.
This trend of lower prices is set to continue through the summer, so we can expect a much lower energy cap in October.
As we all know by now, wind is the cheapest form of electricity. There are many proofs of this – as an example, three years ago, the Good News Network was telling us how wind farms were soon even going to be paying negative subsidies.
“Offshore wind power will soon be so cheap to produce that it will undercut fossil-fuelled power stations and may be the cheapest form of energy for the UK,” said lead researcher Dr. Malte Jansen, from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial. “Energy subsidies used to push up energy bills, but within a few years cheap renewable energy will see them brought down for the first time. This is an astonishing development.”Good News Network
Astonishing.
Last year wind power became so cheap it was nine times cheaper than gas, as Carbon Brief pointed out (eventually; when they started talking, wind was four times cheaper than gas, but by the time they had finished their sentence, they had to revise the stat upwards to nine times cheaper).
In January, it was announced that the penetration of wind was now over 25% in the UK, and had tipped over 80% at some point:
The UK hit a major energy milestone in 2022 as windfarms produced a record amount of the country’s electricity, according to National Grid. Wind-powered electricity made up 26.8 percent of electricity generation in 2022, up from 21.9 percent the year before, figures from National Grid ESO indicate. And earlier this week, National Grid announced the smashing of another record after the percentage of zero carbon electricity generated onto the grid hit a stunning new record of 87.6 percent.Express
You see? We can do it, guys. Deniers go to hell, this is no pipe dream. The plummeting cost of wind and our aggressive deployment of it explains why the UK now has the cheapest electricity among developed nations. Manufacturers are flocking to us to build their factories here, so that they can take advantage of cheap energy and the best-trained and most motivated workforce in the G20.
That’s why Labour’s plan to quintuple – er, quadruple – er, water down the quadrupling of offshore wind makes perfect sense. It’s not really even borrowing money because the loan pays for itself in next to no time. The Green Industrial Revolution will definitely work.*
THE SOUND OF A NEEDLE BEING SCRATCHED ACROSS A RECORD
Actually, of course, the notion that wind power brings cheap electricity is delusional. It is a “cheap way to produce expensive electricity” – a phrase I think I heard at the “Decouple” podcast and deployed on my green councillor when he knocked at the door for a chat. How so? Well, as has been pointed out in various fora over the years, wind brings with it a lot of baggage that is “off book.” A recent article by Willis outlines some of the issues that are conveniently forgotten by the likes of Carbon Brief. The parasitic role of wind on a previously stable grid comes about by its inherent instability. Plus, wind farms have to be established in far flung places, necessitating long cables to reach the “core” grid where people live. Means have to be employed to stabilise its frequency; supply backup power for lulls; pay for grid extensions; and for flipping between DC and AC or stabilising the AC [I’m not sure about this last, since the wind farm developer might be responsible some for that]. Then we have the old favourite, which is that – in the UK at least – the “astonishing” rock-bottom prices that wind farm developers promise to sell their power at in some far-off day turn out to be illusions, one-sided bets to get in the game, a ploy beloved of public contractors world-wide, e.g. aircraft carrier manufacturers, or railway line builders, but particularly destructive in this case.
But we don’t just have to rely on argumentation to settle this “argument,” do we? When Rossi produced his E-cat and promised room temperature fusion, it was very easy to use straightforward measurements to establish his veracity. Or it would have been, if the test conditions had been appropriate. But I digress. I decided to find out what effect wind power has on the cost of electricity directly, by collecting two sets of data for a range of countries: 1) the cost of electricity and 2) the penetration of wind. See how easy it is? I decided to avoid cherry-picking a list of countries by taking the top 20 countries by PPP GDP, a list in which the UK now ranks 10th. This list came from Mr. Wiki. Next I got wind penetration stats from Our World in Data. Household electricity prices for September 2022 came from GlobalPetrolPrices.com. Then all I had to do is plot one against t’other, and prove, once and for all, just how stupid we deniers are.
Now before we go any further, we should note a few caveats. These are that some countries might subsidise their electricity. Others might tax it. Some countries might not even have universal connection yet, and that might artificially reduce the cost of electricity in those places. There might be corruption, incompetence, who knows what. And while I am implying – rather strongly implying, I admit – a causal link, correlation is not causation and both variables here might be strongly correlated with a third, some measure of societal decadence perhaps. Some countries might be connected to other countries with other grid characteristics. But with all that being said, what happens when you add wind power to your grid? Does your electricity get cheaper, or more expensive?
Well, there’s your answer. The more of your electricity you obtain by harvesting wind, the more expensive it gets. I have resisted putting a line through the graph, but I will tell you that if I did, it would have a positive slope.
Wind power is still popular – I think it might be the most popular electricity generator according to vox populi, although it is more popular in the abstract than the particular. I suppose this has something to do with an endless stream of stupid people crawling out of their burrows, each eager to make yet another asinine announcement about how cheap wind power is.
And don’t even get me started on the dead birds.
Note & Featured Image
*Don’t let this lead you to think I have any more respect for the other Westminster parties than I do for Labour. They all have a policy of national suicide, which I am against.
The featured image is from Dall.E, with a prompt something like „A Matisse paper cut-out of a dystopian wind farm with dead birds.“ This is an evolved version, which has become quite abstract; but I rather liked the emotional effect of all those spiky bits.
From time to time, I take a look at other people’s estimates of the levelised costs of renewable power, particularly offshore wind. The merchant bank Lazard has been a source of particular amusement, their figures being so far divorced from reality as to be entirely laughable.
Another oft-cited source on the subject of levelised costs is the International Energy Agency (IEA), whose latest opus on the subject was published a couple of years back. For comedy value, this is right up there with Lazard. Here is their data table on offshore wind.
Followers of the renewables scene will immediately notice that the capacity factors given are extremely optimistic. They are just about plausible as first-year figures, but certainly not as lifetime averages, which would be expected to be in the mid-30s. Extraordinarily, the IEA claims that “the only technology where efficiency losses have a systematic effect is solar PV”. Here is the UK offshore wind output data by turbine size and year of operation.
Meanwhile, the IEA’s levelised cost figures are staggeringly low. At a 3% cost of capital, the numbers cited for the US fall to around £20/MWh, which is roughly one sixth of what offshore windfarms cost in the UK.
But there’s a second problem here. While 14 (unnamed) windfarms are outlined for the US, unfortunately, out in the real world, Uncle Sam has only got round to building two, both tiny pilot plants. Block Island, the larger of the two, has been so staggeringly expensive it makes even the UK ones look cheap.
So where is the IEA getting these numbers for US offshore windfarms from? I have no idea.
It’s the same for some of the other countries too. France opened its first commercial offshore windfarm only last year, while Australia has yet to open even one! The temptation is to assume that the IEA’s numbers are entirely fictional.
Finally, it’s worth noting that at the time of the report’s publication, half of the world’s offshore wind capacity was in the UK, where hard data on the (very high) costs and the (rapidly deteriorating) operating performance is freely available. Strangely though, the IEA has chosen to include not a single windfarm from these shores.
Go figure.
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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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