A major offshore wind developer announced Thursday that it withdrew from a deal with a state utility regulator for two offshore wind projects, citing inflation and other economic pressures.
Ørsted, a key corporate player in the Biden administration’s offshore wind agenda, has backed out of the Maryland Public Service Commission’s (MPSC) orders approving the company’s Skipjack 1 and 2 projects off the Maryland coast, the company announced Thursday. The company said that inflationary pressure, high borrowing costs and supply chain problems have combined to make the state’s subsidies economically unviable, but that it is not yet abandoning the projects and will continue to pursue permits, according to a regulatory filing with the MPSC.
“Today’s announcement affirms our commitment to developing value creating projects and represents an opportunity to reposition Skipjack Wind, located in a strategically valuable federal lease area and with a state that’s highly supportive of offshore wind, for future offtake opportunities,” David Hardy, the executive vice president and CEO of region Americas at Ørsted, said in a Thursday statement. “As we explore the best path forward for Skipjack Wind, we anticipate several opportunities and will evaluate each as it becomes available. We’ll continue to advance Skipjack Wind’s development milestones, including its construction and operations plan.” (RELATED: Blue State Doubles Down On Offshore Wind After 2023’s Massive Failure)
“The statutorily-mandated caps on the residential ratepayer impacts have very little room left,” an MPSC spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The state cannot raise those caps in the absence of legislative action, the spokesperson added.
The withdrawal is the latest sign of trouble for Ørsted, which pulled the plug on two major projects off the New Jersey coast in October 2o23 after many of the same underlying factors made those projects untenable. At one point, the company appeared poised to become a major beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, but the mounting macroeconomic problems that have beleaguered the economy through his first term have weighed heavily on the company.
“Yesterday’s news from Ørsted is disappointing — the Skipjack project was an important component in advancing Maryland’s clean energy goals,” MPSC Chair Frederick Hoover said of the withdrawal. “However, the Commission remains optimistic about the future of the offshore wind industry in Maryland, and would note that the US Wind project continues to move through the federal approval process.”
The withdrawal is the latest sign of distress for the Biden administration’s offshore wind goals, especially if it turns out to be a precursor for the eventual collapse of the company’s Maryland projects. The White House is aiming for offshore wind to produce enough electricity to power more than 10 million American homes by 2030, but that goal now appears to be firmly out of reach, according to Reuters.
Neither Ørsted nor the White House responded immediately to requests for comment.
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New Jersey is starting new offshore wind projects after two major developments effectively failed in 2023.
The state’s utility regulators green lit two major contracts on Wednesday in a bid to revitalize the state’s offshore wind dreams, months after Ørsted — one of the largest offshore wind developers in the world — pulled the plug on two massive projects off the New Jersey coast in October 2023, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) announced Wednesday. As of November 2023, New Jersey was engaged in a dispute with the company over $300 million the state says it is owed.
Inflation, high borrowing costs and logistical problems plagued Ørsted’s projects for months before the company decided it had no other choice but to walk away from its investment. The company previously agreed to pay $200 million to build wind-related facilities in southern New Jersey and set aside $100 million to pay the state in the event it cancelled its projects, but the company was attempting to work its way out of those liabilities as of November 2023.
The new contracts are designed to insulate against the risks of future cancellations, according to E&E News. The deals include provisions that account for inflationary pressures, while also requiring Attentive to put up a $67 million security and mandating that Leading Light put up its own security of $120 million.
The newly-contracted projects are also expected to increase utility rates in the state. Residential electricity rates are expected to jump by $6.84 per month, commercial rates would increase by $58.73 per month and monthly industrial rates would rise by $513.22, according to E&E News. One of the two terminated Ørsted contracts would have been about half as expensive for residential ratepayers, according to The New York Times.
The new contracts are “undeniable proof that the future of offshore wind in New Jersey is as strong as ever,” Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. “From our talented workforce to our growing standing as a regional supply chain hub, our state remains an unparalleled location for the top developers in the world to plant their flags. In addition to bringing good-paying jobs and environmental benefits to the Garden State, these projects will significantly advance our pursuit of a 100% clean energy economy by 2035.”
Murphy’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The NJBPU referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to its press release and declined to comment further.
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Landmark environmental laws leveraged for decades to challenge infrastructure projects are now being used against offshore wind, a key aspect of President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda.
A new lawsuit brought by grassroots environmental groups, fishermen and local citizens alleges that the government did not abide by the terms of statutes including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act in a rush to permit two massive offshore wind developments off the East Coast.
“Destroying ocean habitat in the name of climate change prevention is absolutely hypocritical and atrocious,” Dustin Delano, the COO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), a plaintiff in the suit, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Environmental rules and regulations that activists have used for years to drown disfavored infrastructure projects in litigation are now threatening a key pillar of President Joe Biden’s massive climate agenda.
A coalition of grassroots environmental groups, local residents and fishermen are suing the Department of the Interior (DOI), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Army Corps of Engineers, alleging that the agencies cut corners on key environmental policies in order to hasten the buildout of massive offshore wind projects off the East Coast. Environmentalists are now using key policies like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that have mired other infrastructure projects, including and especially natural gas pipelines, to challenge the legality of Biden administration’s efforts to reach its offshore wind targets. (RELATED: Commercial Fishers Say Biden Admin’s ‘Ocean Justice’ Initiative Totally Ignores Their Concerns)
Environmentalist opponents of offshore wind posit that the construction and operation of the huge turbines disrupt marine ecosystems, including the balance of fisheries and the ability of certain whales to safely navigate the waters. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared “unusual mortality events” for humpback and North Atlantic Right Whales, starting in 2016 and 2017, respectively, a timeline which approximately aligns with the beginning of industrial-scale offshore wind development off the East Coast.
For its part, the government maintains that there is no available scientific evidence that clearly proves a causal link between offshore wind development and the large increase in whale deaths, according to NOAA.
“To implement a massive new program to generate electrical energy by constructing thousands of turbine towers offshore on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf and laying hundreds of miles of high-tension electrical cables undersea, the United States has shortcut the statutory and regulatory requirements that were enacted to protect our Nation’s environmental and natural resources, its industries and its people,” the lawsuit contends.
The lawsuit takes specific aim at Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind, two massive developments off the Rhode Island coast. Plaintiffs in the suit include the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), Save the Right Whales Coalition and Green Oceans.
The Biden administration is aiming for offshore wind to generate enough electricity to meet the demand of 10 million American homes by 2030, but the subsidized industry is facing considerable financial pressure as inflation, high borrowing costs and logistical issues are weighing on profit margins. Apart from potential legal issues that the projects may face, economic conditions are prompting developers to cancel power purchase agreements or terminate projects altogether, putting Biden’s 2030 goal firmly out of reach, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit, filed Jan. 16 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that several of the government’s environmental reviews and procedural decisions underlying its approval of the Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind projects are illegal. The plaintiffs contend that the government may “have violated NEPA by impermissibly segmenting the multiple areas of the offshore wind program and ignoring the cumulative environmental impacts of thousands of turbines on millions of acres of ocean that BOEM will approve in the near future,” and that “BOEM violated NEPA by failing to provide complete analyses and disclose the impacts of the projects.”
Climate activists have previously used the laws cited in this lawsuit to gum up projects they oppose, like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline, according to Jesse Richardson, a professor of law at West Virginia University, and Madison Hinkle, an environmental lawyer. The lawsuit focusing on Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind demonstrate that the Biden administration’s plans for offshore wind developments — and potentially other green energy projects — are going to have to beat legal challenges predicated on NEPA, ESA and other statutes that have long been a problem for oil- and gas-related projects.
“NEFSA and the other grassroots groups like Green Oceans have taken the ‘bull by the horns’ alongside the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance in their fierce opposition to the industrialization of our oceans from foreign offshore wind companies. Once again, we’re seeing an example of fishermen, the true environmentalists of the ocean, fighting to preserve and protect it — while environmental groups remain silent or in some cases, endorse this destructive movement of ocean industrialization,” Dustin Delano, NEFSA’s COO, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Destroying ocean habitat in the name of climate change prevention is absolutely hypocritical and atrocious.”
As Delano mentioned, numerous major eco-activism groups — including Greenpeace and the League of Conservation Voters — have defended offshore wind, suggesting that concerns about the technology’s environmental impacts are being amplified by right-wing groups as part of a wider anti-wind “misinformation” campaign.
“Initially, we were inclined to support these renewable energy efforts. Only when we understood the impacts and no empirical evidence supports their ability to help climate change, did we realize just how devastating the projects will be on the ocean’s health and how little, if any, benefit the projects will provide,” Dr. Elizabeth Quattrocki Knight, the co-founder and president of Green Oceans, a plaintiff in the suit, told the DCNF. “No empirical evidence demonstrates that offshore wind will help climate change. Over and over again, the government’s Environmental Impact Statements admit that the effects of climate change will proceed unchecked and unchanged in this region, despite the presence of the projects.”
The NMFS declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the litigation. The White House, BOEM, DOI and the Army Corps of Engineers did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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After numerous requests going back several years, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has finally published a draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for a combination of coming offshore wind projects. Comments are due by February 27.
In his case, the EIS is for a cluster of six big projects in what is called the New York Bight. The Bight is a triangular indentation on the Atlantic coast bounded by New York and New Jersey. Think of it as the underwater mouth of the Hudson River.
In principle, this PEIS should identify and assess those impacts that arise from the combination of projects, over and above the individual project impacts. In fact, it does nothing of the sort. The result is simply ridiculous.
Most of the 800 or so pages are an eye-glazing academic discussion of the general environment, the sorts of impacts that might or might not occur, and what might or might not be done about them. There is basically nothing about this specific combination of projects.
The greatest concern is that the combined noise from these six projects will severely harm whales and other protected species. This is especially true for the incredibly loud noise from driving the monster monopiles that hold up the giant wind turbines. Construction of all six projects may occur simultaneously, piling on the noise.
Here, the PEIS is simply absurd. It is structured like a project EIS, so the pile-driving impacts are supposedly addressed in a technical appendix on “acoustics”. In this case, it is “Appendix J: Introduction to Sound and Acoustic Assessment”.
That it is labeled an introduction is the tip-off as it is basically an academic treatise. In fact, it starts off by explaining at length how underwater sound is measured. We do finally get to the Bight, but that is about it. What we find is a regurgitation of an academic paper that bears no resemblance to the six projects this assessment is supposed to be about.
To begin with, it uses just two theoretical sites, with a mere 60 turbines each, for a total of 120. BOEM says these six real sites are expected to develop up to 7,000 MW of generating capacity. Recent site designs use 13 MW turbines, which would give about 540 turbines or almost five times more.
But the PEIS study uses noise levels from small 6 MW turbines. At that size, we are talking about more like 1,200 turbines, or roughly ten times as many as are considered. The potential impact of 120 turbines is clearly not helpful in assessing 1,200.
Even worse, the pile driving noise level is for driving a roughly 20-foot diameter pile, which is very small by present and future standards. Today’s 13 to 15 MW turbines use piles around 40 feet in diameter. Moreover, gigantic 20 MW turbines have just been introduced, which might take 60-foot diameter piles.
The noise level is based on the energy of the pile driving hammer, and bigger piles take a lot more energy to drive, so there is a lot more noise. One wonders why BOEM did not measure the noise from the much bigger piles being driven back in July just off Rhode Island. The answer seems that BOEM did not want to put any serious work into this PEIS.
In short, the academic acoustic case considered in the PEIS tells us absolutely nothing about the potentially huge noise impact of the six projects supposedly being assessed. There is literally no environmental impact assessment here.
This vacuum seems to hold for pretty much the entire PEIS, although I have not read it all by any means. But I looked in a lot of places and have yet to find any real assessment of the six projects. There is certainly nothing of substance on noise.
As environmental impact statements go, this one is a joke.
The two firms behind a major offshore wind project decided to cancel a contract to supply power from the development on Wednesday, dealing a major blow to President Joe Biden’s massive green energy agenda.
Equinor and British Petroleum (BP), the firms working in a joint venture to construct the enormous Empire Wind 2 offshore wind farm, canceled a contract with New York state to sell power generated by the project, citing inflationary pressures, high interest rates and supply chain problems, Equinor announced. The cancellation stands as the latest sign of trouble for the offshore wind industry, which the Biden administration is counting on to produce enough energy to power 10 million American homes for one year by 2030.
“Commercial viability is fundamental for ambitious projects of this size and scale. The Empire Wind 2 decision provides the opportunity to reset and develop a stronger and more robust project going forward,” Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables Americas, said in a statement. “We will continue to closely engage our many community partners across the state. As evidenced by the progress at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, our offshore wind activity is ready to generate union jobs and significant economic activity in New York.” (RELATED: Offshore Wind Farms Are Killing Whales ‘In Numbers Never Seen Before,’ Trump Says)
Biden’s Climate Bill Boosted An Offshore Wind Giant, But His Economy Brought It To The Brink https://t.co/AF7SPT2FNu
The two companies had signaled that their projects were facing financial troubles, signing onto a petition to New York officials in September 2023 seeking to renegotiate their contracts to account for economic problems that are dogging the wider offshore wind industry. The contract’s cancellation does not necessarily mean that the project is permanently terminated, but the firms will have to renegotiate the development at a higher price from the state in order to get back on track, according to Reuters.
“Politicians may try to resuscitate it, but this extends offshore wind’s losing streak, which is quite impressive,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation regarding the project and its future prospects. “Even with Biden’s Green New Deal slathering cash all over these things, they can’t seem to grease the skids enough to make these things work.”
The problems facing offshore wind are widespread and severe enough that several energy policy experts previously told the DCNF that they expect the federal government to step in to effectively bail the industry out.
In October, Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, pulled the plug on two major projects off the New Jersey coast, and several other developers have paid hefty fines to get out of agreements to sell power from their projects in other states.
A large proportion of the projected power output from industrial-scale offshore wind projects is under considerable financial duress, and Biden’s 2030 goal appears to be firmly out of reach at this point in time, according to Reuters.
The White House, the Department of Energy and the office of Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul did not respond immediately to requests for comment. BP referred the DCNF to Equinor when contacted for comment, and Equinor did not respond immediately to the inquiry.
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While the climate movement achieved some victories this year, 2023 may ultimately be remembered mostly as a year of key failures and setbacks for environmentalist organizations and their favored policies promulgated by the Biden administration.
The past 12 months saw the collapse of several major offshore wind projects, signs of trouble in the electric vehicle (EV) market, layoffs at major environmentalist groups, a failed pressure campaign to kill a major energy project and more. Environmental activists and green industrial interests largely assumed that the election of President Joe Biden would stand as a boon for their various prerogatives, but this year’s results were not stellar for those interests despite that initial enthusiasm.(RELATED: ‘Tremendously Damaging’: Here’s The Most Aggressive Restrictions Biden’s EPA Pushed On Americans In 2023)
Biden Admin Doubles Down On Climate Cooperation With China As Xi's Economy Goes On Coal Binge https://t.co/NxYSoYMg3v
The Biden administration and activists in favor of sweeping action on climate change have touted offshore wind as a green energy lynchpin of their envisioned fossil fuel-free future, with the White House expecting the technology to provide enough energy to power 10 million American homes each year by 2030. While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill, created generous subsidies designed to stimulate the industry, it is now facing serious problems that lead several energy policy experts to expect the government will have to step in again to save the industry.
Developers are facing considerable issues attributable to inflationary pressure, supply chain backups and logistical issues. These problems have prompted numerous firms to attempt to renegotiate their agreed-upon rates with states and utilities, pay large fines to withdraw from contracts altogether or outright cancel their projects.
Ørsted, a Danish wind company with a major American presence, may have had the roughest 2023 of any firm in the industry. In October, the company announced that it had cancelled two of its major projects off the coast of New Jersey, citing the poor state of the wider economy and the associated impacts on the projects’ ability to be profitable in the long-term.
Meanwhile, the administration’s August offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico underwhelmed, with only one of the three areas available attracting any interest from bidders.
Now, the Biden administration’s 2030 target appears to be firmly out of reach, largely because of the considerable financial challenges the industry faces, according to Reuters.
EV Dreams Show Cracks
Environmentalists and Biden administration officials are also pushing EVs as a key climate solution, with the latter spending billions of taxpayer dollars and aggressivelyregulating markets to reach its goal of having 50% of new vehicle sales be EVs by 2030. Despite these efforts, the EV market appears to be faltering: consumer demand is not growing as quickly as expected, manufacturers are losing large amounts of money on their EV product lines and executives are starting to back off of near-term EV commitments.
China dominates the global supply chain for the raw materials needed to manufacture EVs, and the vehicles are considerably more expensive on average than gas-powered equivalents. For example, the Ford F-150 Lighting, the EV version of one of America’s most popular cars, sells for about $8,000 more than the conventional F-150.
Beyond the higher costs, consumers tend to worry about the inconsistent performance and uneven geographical distribution of the nation’s charging infrastructure. Even Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is not impervious to this problem, as one of her staffers raced ahead of her convoy during a summer road trip promoting EVs to reserve a spot at a Georgia charging station with a gas-powered car. The police were reportedly called when a family with a baby in tow grew angry that the staffer would not move for them to use the charging port, even though Granholm and the rest of the convoy had not yet arrived to plug in. (RELATED: Biden Admin Touted EV Charging Company To Support Climate Agenda. Now, Its Stock Is Tanking)
Activist Layoffs
The past year also saw considerable layoffs at prominent eco-activist organizations, such as the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Defenders of Wildlife, according to E&E News. After the defeat of former President Donald Trump, whose energy agenda provided a boost to enthusiasm and donations supporting the environmentalist cause, many major environmentalist organizations faced considerable budget shortfalls.
The Sierra Club laid off dozens of employees starting in April, which prompted infighting over issues of race and “equity” within the organization in the ensuing months. NRDC similarly laid off dozens of its staffers later in the year, and Defenders of Wildlife laid off more than a dozen of its own employees in the spring as well, according to E&E News.
A Notable Bankruptcy
Proterra, an electric bus manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy in August. Prior to the bankruptcy, the Biden administration had promoted the company, a move which prompted blowback from elected Republicans and government watchdogs that highlighted Granholm maintained a financial interest in the firm after accepting a government job in which she would be overseeing policy that directly impacted the company’s commercial prospects.
Granholm did not sell her shares in the company until after the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into the apparent conflict of interest earlier in May 2021. She eventually closed her position in the firm later that month, netting capital gains amounting to about $1.6 million.
Additionally, Granholm is alleged to have violated the STOCK Act nine times in 2021, a fact which a Department of Energy(DOE) spokesperson said at the time was attributable to “an inadvertent clerical oversight.”
Willow Project Campaign Comes Up Short
Activists launched a broad pressure campaign to goad the Biden administration into cancelling ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow Project in Alaska, which ultimately failed when the administration formally green lit the project in March. Many inside the climate movement were livid with the administration’s decision, characterizing it as a betrayal of a Biden campaign promise to severely crack down on oil and gas drilling on federally-controlled lands.
Recently, climate activists have set their sights on the Calcasieu Pass 2 project, known as CP2, which would be a major export terminal facility for liquefied natural gas (LNG) located to the south of Lake Charles, Louisiana. They appear poised to ratchet up pressure on the Biden administration to kill the project much like they did with the Willow Project, though time will tell whether or not such a campaign could be successful in its aims.
While the push to kill the Willow Project fell flat, Tommy Beaudreau, the former deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, left the administration in October after activists targeted him constantly for his support of the Willow Project.
Trouble In The Loan Programs Office
The DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) also had a tough 2023. The LPO is a key instrument in the Biden administration’s wider green energy push, designed to provide green energy companies with loans that the private sector would not offer, according to the office’s website.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in November that the LPO had reached a conditional commitment to provide Li-Cycle, a lithium battery recycling company, a $375 million loan at the same time that the firm was allegedly defrauding its investors. The LPO does due diligence on its applicants before reaching a conditional commitment, according to its website, meaning that the alleged securities fraud went unnoticed by the relevant LPO officials.
In September, the LPO also extended a $3 billion package to Sunnova, a solar company that allegedly preyed on elderly customers on their deathbeds by talking them into signing multi-decade, five-figure rooftop solar contracts, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
These loans have sparkeddemands from Republican lawmakers, who are seeking information and internal documents regarding the LPO’s internal practices and safeguards. Jigar Shah, who runs the LPO, was hauled into Congress to testify in front of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in October, when Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and John Barrasso of Wyoming grilled him about his continued association with a green energy trade group despite potential appearances of ethical impropriety.
Neither the White House nor the DOE responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
20.12.2023 14:46:10 CET | Ørsted A/S | Inside information
Ørsted has taken final investment decision (FID) on the world’s single largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 3, which will have a capacity of 2.9 GW and is expected to be completed around the end of 2027. Hornsea 3 will be Ørsted’s third gigawatt-scale project in the Hornsea zone following Hornsea 1 (1.2 GW) and Hornsea 2 (1.3 GW), which are already being operated out of Ørsted’s operations and maintenance hub in Grimsby.
The UK is a core market for Ørsted and one of the world’s largest markets for offshore wind, building on strong political support and ambitious build-out targets. Ørsted currently operates 12 offshore wind farms in the UK.
In July 2022, Ørsted was awarded a contract for difference (CfD) for Hornsea 3 at an inflation-indexed strike price of GBP 37.35 per MWh in 2012 prices. The CfD framework permits a reduction of the awarded CfD capacity. Ørsted will use this flexibility to submit a share of Hornsea 3’s capacity into the UK’s upcoming allocation round 6.
Based on a well-established supply chain and synergies with Hornsea 1 and 2, Hornsea 3 has a robust risk-reward profile and a value creation around the bottom end of our targeted lifecycle project return range of 150-300 basis points on top of our weighted average cost of capital. This reflects part of the capacity being awarded a CfD in Allocation Round 6. The possible future addition of Hornsea 4 would create an offshore wind cluster in excess of 7 GW and unlock further cluster synergies.
We have all major contracts for Hornsea 3 in place, including an agreement with Siemens Gamesa for SG 14-236 DD offshore wind turbines, which have a capacity of 14 MW excluding power boost. Most of the capital expenditure for Hornsea 3 was contracted ahead of recent inflationary pressures, securing competitive prices from the supply chain and allowing time to work collaboratively on value creation opportunities. The larger wind turbines and the synergies with Hornsea 1 and 2 lead to lower operating costs than we have seen before in our portfolio.
In short, Orsted want to renege on part of their existing contract, in order to switch that capacity to double the prices in Allocation Round 6.
Given that they have already set up contracts for suppliers to Hornsea 3, they would have incurred huge write offs if they had simply cancelled the whole project.
The government needs to grow a backbone, and tell them they are excluded from Allocation Round 6.
CFACT is not just talking about the tragic mistake of offshore wind, we are taking action.
This week CFACT, partnering with The Heartland Institute, filed their joint intent to bring a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for abrogating their responsibility to protect the endangered Right Whale from the rush to construct wind turbines.
As we state in our press release, “The North Atlantic right whale is listed as ‘critically endangered’ by the governments of both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States. Numerous studies by federal and environmental organizations have found that only about 350 North Atlantic right whales remain in existence.”
Unprecedented numbers of whales have been found dead along our coasts as wind turbine construction proceeds. BOEM released its “biological opinion,” giving Dominion Energy a green light to proceed with building its 2,600 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project 27 miles off Virginia Beach. This biological opinion has numerous pitfalls, including a failure to rely upon the “best available science” and employing a piecemeal approach to assessing risk to marine mammals that minimizes their actual lethality.
If bureaucrats refuse to do their jobs, we aim to force them!
To make matters worse, the Biden Administration’s energy strategy is terribly misguided in claiming offshore wind will meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CFACT released a study this week which concludes, among other things, that “the net ‘carbon’ (carbon dioxide) reduction effects of offshore wind development are hugely negative and cannot justify further investments in this industry.”
You can read the entire study by David Wojick, Ph.D., and CFACT senior policy advisor Paul Driessen at CFACT.org.
The verdict is in regarding offshore wind. When one considers the incredible costs, its threat to the power grid, and the potentially severe threat to marine life, the way forward is simple…
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.
BP’s top renewables executive said last week that the U.S. offshore wind industry is “fundamentally broken.” If anything, the Big Wind industry appears to be in even deeper financial distress.
“The Biden administration’s preposterous plan to establish 30,000 megawatts of nameplate Offshore Wind capacity by 2030 was always a pipedream. It’s what you get when you put the children in charge.” ( – Joseph Toomey, below)
Talented amateurs are often better than the ‘professionals’ when it comes to dissecting U.S. energy policy. Or maybe I have it reversed. The pros are those in the trenches and the amateurs are the ones on high.
So let’s call Joseph Toomey, independent management consultant, an expert. Here is his recent post about the much-in-the-news problems of the offshore wind industry under Biden Energy Policy.
Not long ago, this thread reiterated a resolute, long-standing belief that Offshore Wind is neither practical nor affordable, even in high-tax Democrat-governed Blue States of the U.S. Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions. Four proposed Offshore Wind projects had collapsed into miserable failure after project sponsors demanded increased public subsidies of as much as 65% above the already wildly-inflated feed-in prices they had previously been promised by New York State.
Just this week, it was New Jersey’s turn to be left looking like adolescents for pretending that Offshore Wind could ever become a viable option for supplying the electricity needs of that state’s ratepayers at affordable levels.
Note the delicious fury from New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy who proclaimed that:
“Today’s decision by Ørsted to abandon its commitments to New Jersey is outrageous and calls into question the company’s credibility and competence.”
It was Murphy himself whose competence had been called into question by backing these wildly infeasible ideas.
If this sounds a little too much like a “Spike the Football” moment for our valuable readership, you have my deepest condolences. I just fell off my armchair laughing at the hilarious incompetence of our renewable energy-promoting political class. The day can’t come soon enough when real adults return into leadership positions to pull humanity back from the brink of extinction events that actually exist, as recent troubling global developments adequately demonstrate.
The Biden administration’s preposterous plan to establish 30,000 megawatts of nameplate Offshore Wind capacity by 2030 was always a pipedream. It’s what you get when you put the children in charge.
The badly-needed adult supervision delivered by marketplace realities has now demonstrated to sentient humans that there was never a chance in the whole universe that Biden’s absurd plan could ever be realized.
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Some of the many comments that followed either confirmed the obvious or suggested the way forward.
The obvious from Robert Borlick: “Notice how many days with no output? This is why wind needs to be backed up with dependable generators that can be ramped up to serve the load.”
The way forward from Ken Urkosky: “All this subsidy funding should go to building infrastructure capable of withstanding the harsher weather events we’re told to expect! That would be much more effective in reducing the impacts of climate change vs trying to control our Earth’s climate.”
And Borlick, an important voice in the electricity debate, has had enough with offshore wind:
I strongly opposed the OSW projects that were approved by the Maryland Public Service Commission in 2017 and again in 2021. Both awards violated Maryland law by not conducting valid cost-benefit analyses, which would have eliminated all but one project (US Wind). I tried to persuade the Maryland People’s Counsel to sue the MPSC but they wimped out – both times.
Now the crazies in the Maryland legislature want to approve even more OSW but this time they want to hide the huge subsidies by paying them out of general tax revenues, instead of through the more visible electricity rate increases.
My hope is that cost increases will kill the Maryland projects just as they did the New Jersey projects.
The last word goes to engineer Greg Gardner: “BUT, it made a lot of congresspersons rich… that was the real plan.”
Warning from UK’s biggest energy generator comes after latest bidding round received no offers to build new farms. He said: “We need to see a materially higher price.
No new wind farms will be built off Britain’s shores unless the Government lets operators earn more money from the electricity they produce, the chief of the nation’s biggest generator has said.
Tom Glover, country chair of RWE’s UK arm, said the price offered by the Government to wind farm operators must rise by as much as 70pc to entice companies to build.
Developers must be offered between £65 and £75 per megawatt hour (MwH) for the power generated from wind farms, Mr Glover said.
His warning follows the disastrous result of the last offshore wind allocation round in September, which ended in a humiliation for ministers with not one company offering to build new offshore wind farms.
Mr Glover called the incident “clumsy” and said a failure to increase the price offered to developers risked a repeat.
A number of commentators have rightly criticised this article as being pro-renewables, putting the blame on government. All they did, of course, was to believe the wind industry’s own propaganda about rapidly falling costs.
In particular, the article fails to point out that the prices mentioned are at 2012 prices, which incidentally should be dropped entirely in future auctions, as they are of no relevance and are highly misleading.
£75/MWh, for instance, equates to £95/MWh at current prices. This is an important omission by the Telegraph, because one commenter pointed out that since the current market prices is £100/MWh, offshore wind must still be a bargain!!
The whining of the wind lobby about inflation is also not really valid.
At last year’s auction, offshore wind projects such as Dogger Bank won contracts at £39.65/MWh. This year the govt set the bar at £44/MWh, thus handing a 10% price increase straightaway. And in the year just gone, about another 10% has been added on via RPI indexation.
So RWE and co are already being offered 20% more than projects were signing up for last year.
It may be that some of their costs are rising faster than general inflation, but any competent business builds in contingencies for things like that.
Also with inflation seemingly remaining stubbornly high, the index linked price will be much higher still by the time these projects are commissioned in a few years time.
The undeniable reality is that offshore wind never was viable at the fanciful prices signed up for last year and before. The cheapest offshore wind being sold via CfD is from Triton Knoll, which is being paid £97.82/MWh.
There never was any intention trigger those contracts, instead wind farm owners always planned to sell at much higher prices on the open market.
In the latest auction, this loophole was closed by the govt, leaving the wind industry between a rock and a hard place, with their bluff having been well and truly called.
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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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