By Steve Goreham
Originally published by The Washington Times
The US Department of the Interior announced the first offshore wind energy lease sale earlier this month. Interior plans a July auction of 164,750 acres off the southern coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts for commercial wind farms. But why are federal and state governments promoting expensive offshore wind energy?
The auction is a continuation of the “Smart from the Start” program for expediting offshore wind begun by former Energy Secretary Steven Chu and former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in 2011. Sally Jewell, the new Secretary of the Interior, has embraced the program, stating, “This is history in the making as we mark yet another major milestone in the President’s all-of-the-above energy strategy. Today we are moving closer to tapping into the enormous potential offered by offshore wind to create jobs, increase our sustainability, and strengthen our nation’s competitiveness in this new energy frontier.”
Several governors joined the chorus for offshore wind. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick supports the program, “The U.S. Department of Energy projects 20,000 jobs by 2020 in offshore wind. Why not host those jobs here in Massachusetts?” Maryland governor Martin O’Malley agreed, “Offshore wind is a potential win-win-win for Maryland. Today’s vote positions our State for greater job creation and opportunity, while moving us forward toward securing a more sustainable energy future.”
Governors also voicing strong support are Paul LePage of Maine, Pat McCrory of North Carolina, Bob McDonnell of Virginia, and even Ted Strickland of Ohio, who would place wind turbines in Lake Erie. In 2010, governors from ten states, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virginia, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium to promote offshore wind development.
Unfortunately, offshore wind is enormously expensive. The US Department of Energy (DOE) estimates the levelized cost of wind-generated electricity at more than double the cost of coal-fired electricity and more than three times the cost of power from natural gas. For example, the proposed Cape Wind project off the coast of southeast Massachusetts will initially deliver electricity at 18.7 cents per kilowatt-hour with a built-in increase of 3.5 percent per year over a fifteen-year contract. This is more than triple the wholesale cost of electricity in New England.
Offshore wind is only possible because of generous subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates from government. Today, 38 states offer property tax incentives, 28 states offer sales tax incentives, and 24 states offer tax credits for renewable energy sources. Twenty-nine states have Renewable Portfolio Standards laws requiring utilities to buy an increasing share of electricity from renewable sources, including all ten states in the Offshore Wind Energy Consortium.
At the start of the year, the US government extended the Wind Energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), providing 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity generated from wind. The PTC will cost taxpayers $12 billion this year. Look for the DOE to offer loan guarantees to offshore wind developers. Altogether, government incentives pay 30 to 50 percent of the cost of a wind installation.
The consumer pays twice for offshore wind. First, consumer taxes fund wind energy subsidies and tax breaks. Second, states like Massachusetts force utilities to buy high-cost offshore wind electricity, which then increase electricity rates so the consumer pays again.
At the same time, we’re in the midst of a hydrocarbon revolution. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling will provide more than 100 years of natural gas at current usage rates. With electricity from natural gas at less than one-third the price of offshore wind, why the support for offshore wind from our political leaders?
Electricity from your wall outlet is standard voltage and current. No one can tell the difference between electricity from hydrocarbon sources or “green” sources such as wind. Would governors Patrick and O’Malley repurchase their current car at three times the price?
Wind energy backers claim that if the government subsidizes wind systems, the cost will come down. But that idea is false. Wind turbines are not new technology. After 25 years of installations, about 185,000 wind turbine towers were operating across the world at the end of 2011. Wind technology is already well down the cost learning curve.
In fact, data from the DOE shows that the installed cost of US wind systems has been rising, not falling. Installed costs have risen 65 percent over the last six years, from $1,300 per kilowatt in 2004 to over $2,100 per kilowatt in 2010.
Underlying the push for offshore wind is the ideology of Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. But anyone who believes that building offshore wind turbines will stop the oceans from rising, make the hurricanes less severe, and save polar bears needs to reconsider. Suppose we invest in cost-effective electricity sources, rather than offshore wind?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
A dread to think what the harmonics of the blades will do to marine species that use sonar etc for location.
But that is NOT important to the greenies and the environMENTALists.
That’s what goes for progress in green circles, the same product at three times the cost but without the reliability. They should be made to sign onto a health care plan like that.
These are not ‘Energy Alternatives’ they are subsidy farms. You can tell subsidy farms as they are usually marked by windmills. When the subsidies are farmed out, the subsidy farming company moves on or declares ‘bankruptcy’ and the windmills are left to corrode. The subsidy farmers then move on to another subsidy rich area and begin subsidy farming again. Google: Abandoned windmills
This happens because the contracts for windfarms (and all ‘green energy) are full of get out clauses and have no real performance requirements. So the windmills will be allowed to kill and maim wildlife without penalty; they do not have to supply electricity to receive payment; when the windmills fail after 10 years into a 15 year contract there will be no penalties; there is no requirement to remove these industrial installations and make good the area at the end of their ‘useful life’; there is no risk for the supplier at all only for the taxpayer or end user of energy. Experience in UK is that the reason these green contracts are so soft and generous is that normally they are money laundering exercises allowing politicians to transfer taxpayer and consumer funds to their friends, families and political donors, .
Some refreshing truth on wind energy from of all things, a politician!
http://tinyurl.com/nv6po2h
It’s actually a lot worse than Steve Goreham thinks.
“Levelized costs”, applied to wind energy, are a scam. Intermittent and unpredictable energy from wind is a different product from dispatchable – ready when needed – energy from gas or coal.
Whether wind is worth it or not has got nothing to do with the per-kilowatt cost of wind vs. other energy. The correct equation is the cost of wind compared to its own value, i.e. its price on the market.
On this basis, wind is an inherent dud, since whenever it is available, it pushes down its own price.
Huge investments in wind power in Europe and Australia have sent electricity prices though the roof. Wind energy is not just useless, it pours money down the drain.
See the excellent paper on this by Prof. Gordon Hughes: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2012/08/Hughes-Evidence.pdf
or articles by Prof. Paul Joskow of MIT/Sloan, e.g.: http://www.energypolicyblog.com/2010/10/16/don%E2%80%99t-levelize-wind-and-solar-energy/
Think of all that free power they’ll generate during a hurricane!
The “installed cost” has been rising for the simple reason that *actual* costs are comprising an increasing percentage of the calculation compared with *projected* costs. The estimates for offshore wind energy costs are, of course, all *projected*. The *actual* costs will be higher, far higher, ludicrously higher. Lunatics in charge.
This idea is so ridiculous with current technology. I would love to see a breakdown of how much energy it takes to keep these things up and running (literally), just the human maintenance cost must be astronomical (technicians can’t live on site because of the noise, they have to boat out and back every day). I bet it’s close to their output.
I have a friend who thinks windmills are great, ‘just hide them out to sea’. As I said ‘have you ever been on the high seas eg the North Sea?’. The answer was no of course.
Ian W. – The Prime Minister’s father-in-law is an example: A couple of years ago he said that he makes a ‘modest income’ of some £300k per year from the wind turbines on his land!
“Smart from the Start.”
Good job I’d finished drinking my morning tea*. Still have a dry keyboard.
* a British perversion.
Are geneticists already looking for changes to sea bird genomes enabling them to avoid getting wacked? There should be a high selection pressure.
The name of this inane program should be changed from, “Smart from the Start” to “Bungled from the Beginning”……
Wind energy destroys jobs, makes US goods uncompetitive, is expensive, diffuse, intermittent, inefficient, ineffective, UNsustainable and, well, stupid.
And what’s with the President’s “All of the Above” strategy. If you try such a stupid strategy to a multiple choice test, you get an “F” on the exam, which is the grade I’d BHO’s energy policy.
If I were President for a day, My first act would be to abolish the unconstitutional departments of EPA and Energy and let the states to decide their own environmental standards and let the market decide what energy sources to utilize.
I’d then establish the necessary rules, regulations and standards for Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors to be built and offer a $1 billion prize to the first company that could build and operate a LFTR capable of producing electricity at an all-in cost of $0.03/kWh.
The current political and economic disasters we’re facing reminds me of a corollary to Woody Allen’s famous line, “Those that can, do. Those that can’t teach, and those that can’t teach become politicians…”
RSS numbers are out for May, and show a similar drop to UAH.
Current temperatures are effectively the same as the 1981-2010 average.
Global warming?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/rss-figures-for-may/
‘Kaboom says: June 8, 2013 at 12:25 am
That’s what goes for progress in green circles, the same product at three times the cost but without the reliability. They should be made to sign onto a health care plan like that.’
We have one of those in the UK : it’s called the NHS; then there’s the media plan – called the BBC.
Tripling the cost of energy improves competitiveness. Got it.
In the UK, the cost of generating a unit of electricity worth £1 from a coal-fired power station costs £24 when generated from an offshore wind turbine. That’s why we have the highest electricity bills and yet the most unstable electricity supplies in the EU. Last March, the coldest on record, we were down to 3 days supply of natural gas.
Catastrophically costly madness. How are they in hurricanes? I hear that the US east coast gets a few of those. They do not cure the problem either. Oh I forgot, there is no problem just mad politicians who love spending tax dollars, ie., YOUR money.
Wondering what happens when a hurricane passes by? Do NH hurricanes have the same propensities as SH cyclones, eg concentrated vortices, high-low-high pressure effects?
I assume that these things get shut down, but a bit difficult to imagine how they are going to stay in one piece.
Windmills are NOT an alternative source of electricity by any criterion. They produce the wrong sort of electricity at the wrong time. Their output is completely unpredictable and is useless, in fact damaging, in a modern generating & grid system.
About all they are useful for is grinding corn and mincing bird meat. Costs don’t even come into it.
It’s wonderful having thieves, liars and nincompoops in charge of energy policy, and paying more because of it. Anger is a good motivator.
And if
NexTerrorNextEra (formerly known as Florida Power and Light) happens to be the supplier of choice, you’d better mind your manners and not complain about these useless landscape-blighting, budget-busting, fuel-poverty inducing bird-mincers.‘Cuz if you do complain, this Big Wind bully will eventually SLAPP you with a lawsuit.
https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/342063820929372160
and
https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/342423552198311937
Having had about 30 years experience in shipping, I am quite convinced that the rigours of a harsh off-shore environment have been underestimated. I suspect that the cost effective life expectancy will be far less than assumed and that the costs of maintenance (and the difficulties involved) have also been very much under-estimated.
To give just one example, due to health & safety considerations, it will not be permissible to work on these structures in adverse weather (heavy rain and wind). These farms are, for obvious reasons, sited in areas which are more windy the norm. This may be good for electricity generation but will make maintenance more difficult. Since weather is notoriously difficult to predict, it will not be known the dates when a weather window opportunity will open up permitting maintenance to be carried out. This presents logistical problems with the chartering in of supply vessels, or vessels with cranes. Say that in June one takes a decision to carry out maintenance in the second week of July. The estimated duration of the required maintenance is one week. Vessels are chartered in and arrive say on 8th July. Unfortunately bad weather sets in and does not clear until 17th July. But the vessel has only been fixed for 8th to 15th July so has to be released, and a new arrangement made for a later date. Perhaps the vessel is not released but continuesd on site and maintenance commences on 17th July but weather again sets in on 22nd July and the job in the end is not completed until 31st July. In this scenario, the supply vessel will be cartered not for one week but for 24 days. Hire will have to be paid for 24 days not just 7 days. The shipowner may have another contract that he was contracted to perform on say 16th July. He may have to pay damages for the failure to perform that contract. The windfarm will have to pay damages to the shipowner to cover that loss. There may be penalty provisions for over-runs etc. The upshot is that since the weather is fickle, pre-planned maintenance will be difficult and is likely to prove expensive.
Of course, the windfarm may wis to spot charter vessels as and when a weather window is open. But spot chartering on this basis carries with it premium hire rates.
This type of problem may of course involve the chartering in of helicopters paying men for standby time/idle time etc.
One final point is that carrying out maintenance at sea is always much more difficult compared to land. Just imagine the difficulties of precision engineering requiring the use of a crane. On land, everything is static and hence the job is straight forward. However at sea, there will be picth and roll as the vessels bobs up and down in the swell and waves.
To conclude, all of this will prove very expensive and will act as a disentive to carry out maintenance. I suspect that it will soon be discovered that carrying out maintenance is not cost effective and instead turbines will stand idle/not working. This will have a significant bearing on the cost effectiveness of an off-shore facility
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying “America can always be trusted to do the right thing – once they’ve tried everything else”.
Don’t your people ever look around at others’ experience? Try the Netherlands, Germany and UK for a start.
This is the sort of thing which makes members of Congress very rich.
And makes a boom town in areas in Washington DC, while continuing longest national recession
in history.
Interior plans a July auction of 164,750 acres off the southern coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts for commercial wind farms.
Good thing there’s no tourism industry up there, with many thousands of tourists wanting their unobstructed ocean views.
Nor any commercial fishermen, or fishing period, as it’d be deemed too hazardous to have nets and ropes and lines around the pilings. No boats at all would be best, due to the possibility of being suddenly violently hit with chunks of former seagulls.
Thankfully it’d do wonders for the local shark populations, who will learn to listen for lots of whooshing as an indicator there may soon be a lot of chum raining down from the sky.
Will the buyers have to put up a bond for each turbine to ensure they will be removed after they eventually die? It will be preferred to remove these hazards to navigation in case boat traffic is allowed to resume someday. And it needs to be the full amount up front, not a bank certificate that will mature to that amount “after 30 yrs at the expected end of life”. Ocean storms thrash the brand new as well as the old, they don’t care if they’ve irreparably broken something commissioned only a month ago, or that’s still under construction.