By Allen Brooks
“With two of the three projects in trouble, Massachusetts will not meet its clean energy goals, and when they do, the power prices will be higher than expected…. The energy chaos in the state is getting interesting with significant implications for the offshore wind business.”
The ongoing saga of Commonwealth Wind’s future took another twist in late January when it filed with the Massachusetts Supreme Court a petition to set aside the order by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (PUC) issued on December 30, 2022, approving the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) prices negotiated with the three local utilities purchasing the electricity.
The challenging, worsening economics have upset the future of the project. Avangrid, the developer of the Commonwealth Wind project, wishes to renegotiate the PPA prices or to have them rejected by the PUC which would then allow Avangrid to rebid the project’s output in the next Massachusetts wind power solicitation scheduled for this spring.
The saga commenced in the early fall when Avangrid told investors and analysts that it was going to request a “price adjustment” to its PPAs that would improve the project’s economics. Avangrid officials sought to reopen negotiations over the price of its electricity, which would enable the project to be financed.
Management currently calls the wind farm “unfinanceable” because “unexpectedly high and persistent inflation, supply shortage and increases in supply costs, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and rapid increases in interest rates had negatively affected the economics of the Project to the point where the PPAs would no longer facilitate the financing of the Project due to the Project’s negative net present value.”
Before Avangrid filed of its petition, Climatewire authored an article about the risk to Massachusetts’ clean energy mandate from the travails of one company – Avangrid. The company has won three of the five major clean energy projects awarded by the state since 2017. The three projects include Mayflower Wind I, Commonwealth Wind, and New England Clean Energy Connect, a transmission line through Maine bringing hydropower from dams in Quebec that would supply 18% of Massachusetts power. The transmission project is mired down in legal battles, while Commonwealth Wind cannot be built because Avangrid cannot raise the money needed, according to its recent filings.
Mayflower Wind is currently under construction and should be completed by late this year. The bigger issue is how these projects would impact the state’s clean energy goal. The state needs to reduce its CO2 levels from around 64 million tons in 2020 to about 47 million tons by 2030. Avangrid estimates its three projects would contribute a combined seven million tons in annual emissions reductions or about 40% of the reductions needed by Massachusetts.
With two of the three projects in trouble, Massachusetts will not meet its clean energy goals, and when they do, the power prices will be higher than expected.
Climatewire pointed out that the original clean energy law mandated that, at each offshore wind solicitation, the prices negotiated needed to be lower than those agreed to in the most recent solicitation. This irrational policy assumed that the downward trajectory of renewable energy prices would continue.
Rising Wind Costs
That downward trend has not only stopped but prices have likely backtracked by five years or more. The policy has been changed in the recently amended legislation. The article pointed out that the Commonwealth Wind price was much more aggressive in producing a lower power price. Therefore, the magazine wonders whether merely giving Avangrid back the $5 per megawatt price they undercut the prior price threshold might be sufficient to resolve the standoff.
Where does the Avangrid petition go? Our reading of the order and the petition leaves us wondering about the timeline of the original order. The PUC asked if Avangrid was going to appeal their rejection of the company’s request to delay the PPA review.
The company said no–but then filed a challenge 32 days later. Avangrid is claiming in its petition that the PUC did not accept additional Avangrid data pertinent to the matter before issuing its order. But the company said it was not going to appeal, at which point the PUC closed the file and began deliberation before rendering its order.
The bigger problem facing the court, other than judging the facts, is the precedent a ruling in favor of Avangrid would set for other offshore wind projects and their developers. It could unleash a rush of developers wanting to renegotiate their PPAs to get higher prices. The energy chaos in Massachusetts is getting interesting with significant implications for the offshore wind business.
Ja
I told you
When you stop the wind in its tracks, you actually do change the weather…
Tear down what is being built and build nuclear or gas generators. Wind and solar aren’t viable, everyone can see that. The time to stop being stupid is now.
In a US electricity marketplace where the best combination of cost versus benefit ruled, gas-fired generation would rule the electricity market roost.
The market for nuclear energy in the US is being driven mostly by low-carbon and zero carbon mandates.
In the absence of these zero-carbon mandates, the only reason for considering new-build nuclear in the US would be to gain some measure of energy security for possible disruptions in our supply of natural gas.
For which one must be willing to pay a price premium for a nuclear-generated megawatt-hour in comparison with a gas-fired megawatt-hour.
Back to the subject of offshore windpower in Massachusetts.
If the state’s politicians want their offshore wind projects completed, they must drop any pretense that their public service commission can keep wind and solar’s costs under control and simply buy renewable energy construction services under continuous, level-of-effort purchase contracts.
‘The market for nuclear energy in the US is being driven mostly by low-carbon and zero carbon mandates.’
With the existence of intermittent wind & solar ‘mandates’, we don’t have anything even close to a free market for any type of electrical generation, especially with respect to base load sources like nuclear and coal. To be blunt, the only reason gas-fired turbines are preferred over the latter two base load sources is because they can respond better to the vagaries of wind and solar. Implement a system that is based on merit dispatch, along with compensating penalties for non-performance, and we’ll know exactly what the market says the generation fleet should look like, not before.
Here in the US Northwest, the long-term planning direction for the region between about 2009 and about 2019 was to replace coal-fired generation with gas-fired generation, while gradually adding wind and solar as an adjunct source of power.
During that ten-year period, the emphasis on new-build gas-fired generation was generally in alignment with where the power generation market for the entire nation was going.
More recently, the option of expanded gas-fired generation for the US Northwest has been completely abandoned, for all practical purposes. By political diktat, all new-build generation capacity which serves the US Northwest must be wind and solar.
On paper, new-build nuclear for the region remains an option.
But the practical reality is that no one expects new-build nuclear to play any serious role in decarbonizing our supply of electricity between now and the 2035 Net Zero deadline.
The 2035 deadline will pass well before the nuclear construction industry is in a condition where it can crank out a robust supply of new reactors on cost and on schedule.
the goal is net zero by 2035? amazing what visionaries lead your region 🙂
Well, as they say, we only have 10 years left. When that runs out without any serious “dent” in meaningless “emissions,” they’ll give us another 10 years.
And this/next time, they REALLY mean it!
The 2035 target is Net Zero for electricity generation. The only means of getting there for the US Northwest is to impose strictly enforced energy rationing on the region.
Wind and solar have a built-in energy rationing scheme.
The only problem with your thinking is “net zero”. There is no need for net zero, CO2 is plant food and more is better. All coal is, is stored solar power. So let’s juice up the coal plants and roll some CO2, the planet will love you for it.👍😎
The NW has massive hydro that can throttle to compensate for unreliable generation.
Mass is trying to use Quebec hydro to do their throttling for unreliables.
Terrorists would just need to damage the long transmission lines from the hydro sources, including from Hoover Dam to So Cal to end the unreliable charade.
The thing is conservatives don’t do such things. Only radical liberals do that type of destructive thing.
“Terrorists would just need to damage the long transmission lines from the hydro sources, including from Hoover Dam to So Cal to end the unreliable charade.”
People not generally thought to be terrorists might take up the idea as this burden gets heavier on them.
“from Hoover Dam to So Cal”
I lived in So Cal for a long time. I have always wondered why something like this has never happened.
Implement a system that is based on merit dispatch
As opposed to equity dispatch for wind and solar.
I understand much better now…
“…gain some measure of energy security…”, that’s exactly what a modern, advanced, stable culture needs. That should be the punchline for the report.
Exactly! After all Civilization requires Energy.
And that is exactly what was abandoned when we went from the ‘natural monopoly’ electric utility concept with government-regulated IOU service and ‘reformed’ it to government manipulated electric generation ‘markets.’ Our energy security requires long-term planning for an eventual decline in FF generation. Nukes are the only way to go given current and reasonably expected future technologies. And ratepayers are just going to have to accept higher initial costs. France made that rational decision decades ago and are reaping the benefits.
A very large gas pipeline was proposed a few years ago to enter MA from NY. I think it was something like 6′ in diameter. It was fiercely opposed.
Not really. IIRC, NY denied the pipeline’s application to cross NY State. Didn’t matter what Mass wanted.
Much like Quebec denying an oil pipeline to the Atlantic fro central Canada. Of course if the US in the form of the Obama and Brandon administrations had not blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, the oil companies never would have tried to go through Quebec.
My solution to the Quebec obstruction was to get the oldest, dirtiest oil tankers possible and run the oil down the St Lawrence Seaway, and stop at Montreal and Quebec City for days on end providing an eyesore for the inhabitants of those cities. Of course also charge all added costs to the Provence of Quebec when selling product to them.
Modern government employees watching over these contracts?
When the construction services and operators go bankrupt, invoke the bonds for tearing down and removing what has been installed.
Go right to natural gas and nuclear installations as the solution.
Cease wasting copper, advanced carbon laminates, massive concrete bases and anchors, neodymium and other rare-Earth metals, space and killing wildlife installing offshore wind.
Install the most reliable consistent high quality, cheapest and safest energy sources.
If the wind farms and solar farms are being procured directly by a state government agency under a level-of-effort, cost plus type of contract — as opposed to the type of contract now being used — then the construction services and the operators will never go bankrupt.
Under a level-of-effort, cost plus type of contract, the money will keep flowing regardless of how much the wind farms and the solar farms actually cost.to construct and operate, and regardless of how long it takes to place the wind farms and the solar farms into operation.
As I see it, a level-of-effort, cost plus type of contract is the only approach Massachusetts could use which won’t bankrupt its renewable energy service providers. Sure, using this contractual approach might eventually bankrupt the state. But that problem can be avoided simply by raising taxes — something which is easily done in Massachusetts.
How socialist of you…
Your preferred solution make big government even bigger and more wasteful, along with forcing wind utilities to employ people just to handle reporting and proposal contracts to government.
The contractors and operators made a classic mistake of assuming interest rates and inflation would stay low. An absurd assumption.
Like tens of thousands of other businesses these past three years, let the foolish wind operators and contractors go bankrupt.
Keep government out of forcing citizens to suffer government renewable energy idiocy and their ridiculous reliable energy destruction plans.
Wind and solar are inefficient intermittent poor quality suppliers of electricity.
One should also keep in mind that installing offshore wind turbines kills dolphins and whales as evident this past year. After installation, wind turbines kill birds endlessly.
JP Morgan’s Dimon is currently pushing for government to use Eminent Domain law to seize land for installing near useless wind and solar.
Great for JP Morgan. Absolutely irresponsible abuse of Massachusetts and northeast state citizens.
Governmental abuse of it’s citizens to favor solutions to achieve unintelligent virtue signaling, given that wind farms are not reliable sources of electricity.
Stop wasting money and government efforts on irrational wind and solar arrays that can never supply high quality consistent electricity.
Build and install nuclear, natural gas and coal generating facilities that produce consistent high quality electricity.
The idiots in MA closed a very productive and working Nuclear Plant in Plymouth. Electricity Rates have doubled since the shut down. Elected politicians in MA are idiotic and continue to make the worst decisions for the citizens.
The Pilgrim plant in MA needed some expensive upgrades. So did Vermont Yankee. But in a New England electricity marketplace severely warped by the presence of wind and solar incentives, the costs of making the upgrades couldn’t have been recovered unless those two plants had been given direct subsidies. Which wasn’t going to happen.
So scrap the useless wind and solar and upgrade the nuclear. Intermittent power sources don’t belong on any grid system.
Public policy decision makers in Massachusetts and Vermont decided otherwise. As did public policy decision makers in New York State when they forced the closure of Indian Point. It will be years before these politicians face any political blowback for what they’ve done — if they ever face any at all. (Yes, I’m being pessimistic here.)
That does not excuse Massachusetts, Vermont and New York virtue signaling with land and money wasting ridiculous temporary solutions.
One or two cold winters in the Northeast will bring those foolish politicians all of the political blowback they could ever want.
Those cold winters are closer than people know as the Atlantic’s circulation is due to turn negative after recent decades of positive circulation.
I hate to mention this but it’s voters who elect these criminals. The worst in America (and most other Western Civilizations) are in gov’t. We’ll never get relief from these thieves until we alter the voting mess created by the cabal in every national capital. 🙁
That is blaming the citizens for all of the lies told to them by activists, faux scientists, politicians and the alleged green companies that stand to profit from politician foolishness.
The government has a reverse Midas Touch. If done by the government it costs more and/or doesn’t meet the intended objective.
In short it is bad governance to stop an energy generation option without a better — cheaper — alternative in hand.
As it turns out there is a significant portion of Climate Scientists who make a good case for CO2 not causing any Global Warming. And yet the politicians don’t understand (they never do).
“And yet the politicians don’t understand”
Because they are paid by lobbyists not to understand.
“Wind and solar aren’t viable, everyone can see that“
If only that were true. We still have people right here arguing that they are.
“Offshore wind business” meaning scam to transfer taxpayer money to certain favored individuals with political connections, to “solve” a problem by using an inefficient and costly method that mostly does not work…
Offshore bank accounts
No surprise again as common sense rules over the imaginary energy producers. This isn’t news, it has been reported since before the first renewable farce was installed. Engineering 101 should have derailed offshore wind.
It couldn’t happen fast enough in that failed climate state of Edward Markey and the climate con man state.
My response to this article has been laughter and lots if it.
From the article: “Climatewire pointed out that the original clean energy law mandated that, at each offshore wind solicitation, the prices negotiated needed to be lower than those agreed to in the most recent solicitation. This irrational policy assumed that the downward trajectory of renewable energy prices would continue.
Rising Wind Costs
That downward trend has not only stopped but prices have likely backtracked by five years or more.”
Has there ever been a real downward trend in renewable energy prices?
I know that’s the claim of those selling renewable energy, but where’s the evidence for this?
“Has there ever been a real downward trend in renewable energy prices?”
In short the answer is, no not even close
That’s what I thought. 🙂
Lobbyists, alleged green companies, noisy often violent activists, greedy politicians need to suffer market forces for their mistakes. They are the ones who fiddled the numbers to falsely support lower LCOE wind and solar prices.
Both wind and solar would NOT be considered if their negatives were not so sugar coated! Sugar coating lies told to them by politicians and everyone else wanting to be in on the green funding trough.
When they’re bankrupt, their political donations disappear, and voters are told the truth, this particularly foolish energy scam will subside into nothing.
I suppose this was also caused by Russian invasion and other “unexpected” events like non-zero interest rates and forgetting banking 101.
story tip
Climate tech startups face ‘massive hole’ after Silicon Valley Bank collapse (yahoo.com)
I would suggest re-use of the permit applications and grants and float pine trees out to the site for Obama tax credits for conversion to biofuels.
Onshore wind makes no sense. Its LCOE is $146/MWh (10% penetration, ERCOT grid) compared to CCGT at about $60. Even EIA says offshore wind is 3x onshore wind, making less than no sense.
If you read the Boston Herald’s Howie Carr you’d find that offshore wind is the least of their problems.
This makes no sense at all. Every week I am told that wind is the cheapest energy on the planet.
Ho ho ho the war in Ukraine
Obiden’s war
“The energy chaos in the state is getting interesting”
Not so interesting if you live here. It gets crazier by the day.
“The state needs to reduce its CO2 levels from around 64 million tons in 2020 to about 47 million tons by 2030.”
I’ll be happy to take bets that that won’t happen. 🙂
Nor is there any “need” for it to happen.
the one thing they can do- is to prevent anyone buying a new ICE car in MA after 2035
there is a big used car market here with nice cars coming from the south- not sure what the impact will be on that market
I suspect that no ICE mandate will go by the wayside, just as it will in Europe. Not enough cobalt and lithium, even at exorbitant prices, to enable the batteries needed. And Tesla has an active battery recycling research program. So far, they can recycle 92% by weight (but they don’t say at what cost). Nickel, aluminum, copper. But NOT lithium or cobalt.
“Climatewire pointed out that the original clean energy law mandated that, at each offshore wind solicitation, the prices negotiated needed to be lower than those agreed to in the most recent solicitation. This irrational policy assumed that the downward trajectory of renewable energy prices would continue.”
Nothing rational about the state of MA government. Don’t get me started….. 🙂
“The energy chaos in Massachusetts is getting interesting with significant implications for the offshore wind business.”
There is now fierce resistance against industrial scale solar “farms” in MA, not by climate skeptics but by the greens who don’t like seeing forests chopped down for that purpose. Few wind turbines will be built on land- nobody wants them. The greens oppose all fossil fuels, all nuclear, all woody biomass, all pumped storage. I argue with these fools almost every day and have been doing so for decades. There is some who oppose wind energy at sea but not enough to stop it. The financing and engineering might do so- or slow it down. And then after all this wind energy at sea is built- then what when we have windless weather? Apparently the state energy geniuses don’t observe what happens in the UK with its dependence on wind- and Texas.
The greens here in MA think the solution is easy- just put solar on every building- but a few years ago, the state energy czar said in a webinar that that’s impossible- solar on all the roofs wouldn’t even meet electricity needs, never mind transportation, heat, industry, etc. to arrive at net zero nirvana by 2050. Then he foolishly said, to his small webinar audience, that the state will simply force everyone to comply to get to net zero. For that, the 36 year old czar got fired- and lost his very nice 6 figure income.
Off topic, but the state of MA is and has always been incredibly corrupt- but I won’t go there now.
Do any small property owners have their own wind turbine?
I’ve seen a few small ones in central MA- not even sure what they’re doing with them. I haven’t read anything about small turbines in the state. Rooftop solar is getting very common- but many don’t look right- facing east or west instead of south and many have big trees blocking part of the panels. People install them with massive subsidies and tax breaks.
MA is probably one of the worst inhabited places on Earth to get value from solar panels. I have not actually looked at its cloudiness but I suspect it suffers persistent cloud in fall and not much sunlight in winter.
There are people living off grid in a remote region of Tasmania, Australia using solar/battery at about 39S but it is a region that does not get a lot of rain and the panels are mounted at 70 degrees to horizontal to make the most of winter sunlight.
Ultimately it is lower cost for individual land owners to go off grid using wind and/or solar than using grid power from the same intermittent sources.
Rooftop solar contributed 12% of power generation in Q42022, contributing more than wind generators. Australia is well suited for solar generation. It is subsidised and distributors are installing local batteries so households remain on the network instead of installing their own battery. Rooftops are eroding the income of the grid scale intermittents because they are not yet exposed to any wholesale price, which often goes negative causing grid intermittents to curtail. The rooftops are a significant destabilising influence so individuals making that choice hasten the eventual end of the giant Ponzi scheme.
Australia’s reality check is fast approaching.
Nothing new under the sun .I was brought up in a house that had a wind charger , charging a 12 volt car battery to run lights in 1945.
In 1948 a power line was erected over the farm to a coastal village .
We were then connected to 240 volt electricity and a new set of lights were installed .
But what a great day when a refrigerator and washing machine arrived .
Can the present generation of bureaucrats imagine what it would be like living 25 miles from town trying to keep food cool and having to light a fire under a copper to heat water to wash clothes by hand .
My early memory of lighting in a weekender was kerosene lamps. A battery and electric bulbs would have been a step up. But after a couple of years the grid even got to the weekender.
It only took about 60 years to develop the grid as most in the developed world experienced. Grids could actually take longer to destroy than they took to develop despite the concerted effort by most governments to make them fragile shadows of what they had become about 20 years ago.
Do we have any numbers for the Avangard PPA? It would be interesting to compare against the latest indexed prices for offshore wind in the UK which have just had their annual inflation uplift, taking the highest offshore wind CFD to £209.32/MWh, while the CFD for Dogger Bank A which is in the course of construction is now priced at £49.77/MWh. No-one expects it to actually commence the CFD any time soon, taking advantage of the option under the contract not to do so.
It is also going to be interesting to see how much interest the next round (AR5) of CFD auctions attract, because these have much harsher contractual conditions, including zero compensation in periods of negative market prices (previously the full strike price could be claimed in most circumstances), and the option to commence the CFD lying with the government counterparty once the wind farm has achieved substantive commissioning, while the cap on auction bids remains far too low to compensate..
The Chairman of JP Morgan wants the government to start seizing property in order to speed up progress on “climate change”.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/jp-morgan-ceo-suggests-government-seize-private-property-quicken-climate-initiatives
story tip
He’s welcome to go first.
A WEF member of course.
Perfect is the enemy of good. In seeking perfect – net zeo – good solutions are being cast aside.
Common sense tell you that the cost of perfection is infinite. Net Zero will bankrupt the economy.
There is nothing quite so uncommon in government as common sense.
I don’t want to have anything to do with any off it. Not the Solar, not the wind mills and not the stupid all electric cars. Just watched another review of that Ford all electric Lightning P/U ( Hoovies Garage on YouTube) what a worthless waste of money. I run a service business; Electric trucks would destroy our productivity, especially when cold out which is when people really need us. Stupid- all of it.
Tesla apparently offer good roadside service. In one video showing a service call, I noted that the service mechanic arrived in an ICE powered van. BEVs have a place – golf courses.
If you take a broad view of this story, it is an early indicator of why wind turbine generators are unsustainable. The notion of them being “renewable” is an illusion built on manufacturing them in a fossil fuelled based economy. An economy running on W&S and chemical battery energy storage has embedded very high energy costs that cannot continue to replicate from internal resources.
The transition from fossil fuels to W&S cannot happen on a global basis. Some nations may be able to achieve it but it will have complete reliance on other nations providing the hardware manufactured using fossil fuels.
There is an awful lot of concrete and steel used in both onshore and offshore wind turbines. Both are absolutely dependent on coal for manufacture. (Scaling up of hydrogen production of steel is years away) There is also talk now of using concrete for the towers as well as the normal bases and floating bases of offshore wind.
As you say wind will be reliant on fossil fuels for a long time to come – perhaps forever.
Oh, yeah: It’s the Russians’ fault. And high interest rates, inflation, and supply chain issues just happen in a vacuum without a proximate cause…like long-standing, short-sighted economic policies.
Wind advocacy has claimed for years that wind power prices are cheaper than fossil fuel generated energy, and that wind generated power would only get cheaper.
These wind farm contractors have gotten stuck on their own implications.
If the situation was reversed, say wind farm contractors and operators earning windfall profits, they would be aghast at any suggestion they return any of the profits.
Lots of companies go out of business every year because they misunderstood or mistimed the market.
My previous comment concerning the use of level-of-effort, cost-plus contracts applies.
If the wind farms and solar farms are being procured directly by a state government agency under a level-of-effort, cost-plus type of contract — as opposed to the type of contract now being used — then the construction services and the operators will never go bankrupt.
Under a level-of-effort, cost-plus type of contract, the money will keep flowing regardless of how much the wind farms and the solar farms actually cost.to construct and operate, and regardless of how long it takes to place the wind farms and the solar farms into operation.
As I see it, a level-of-effort, cost-plus type of contract is the only approach Massachusetts could use which won’t bankrupt its renewable energy service providers.
Sure, using this contractual approach might eventually bankrupt the state. But that problem can be avoided simply by raising taxes — something which is easily done in Massachusetts.
Sheer nonsense. Recipe for collusion, fraud and is definitely a government bloat as entire new departments would have to created to track and enforce these contracts. As well as wind/solar companies needing to hire employees to interact with government contractors.
Un-needed contracts to boot!
It is NOT the responsibility of government to foster and nurse foolish businesses.
A comment that should be publicly announced every time wind/solar lobbyists push their falsehoods!
Massachusetts’ citizens already nicknamed the state Taxachusetts.
The benefit the current approach to contracting has for Massachusetts politicians is that it allows them to point the finger of blame at the utilities and at the wind and solar construction services firms and at the operators when costs inevitably rise and schedules inevitably slip.
Utility CEOs play a finely-tuned game of negotiation with the politicians and with the regulators. It is part of the job description of a modern utility CEO to absorb blame for rising costs and slipped schedules, blame which would otherwise be heaped on politicians and regulators for funding and approving energy projects which are clearly destined to fail.
Said a little differently, within the modern ecosystem of energy politics, blame acceptance for failed renewable energy projects is an assigned role and responsibility for a utility CEO, a role and responsibility for which those CEO’s are handsomely compensated.
In any case, the key metric to watch is how much legacy fossil-fuel generation capacity, stated in terms of annual megawatt-hours produced, is being shut down both inside the state of Massachusetts and in the surrounding region without equivalent replacement by wind and solar.
Will a day of reckoning ever come for the state’s politicians and public service regulators? Will any of these people ever be held accountable for the disastrous energy policies they’ve pushed?
Not likely. The voting citizens of the US Northeast have been drinking millions of gallons of renewable energy Kool-Aid for two decades. These people with never come to grips with the true causes of the energy starvation mess they will soon find themselves in.
Prescient music from 1967.
Sounds like Massachusetts Offshore Wind has a whale of a problem.
To be honest, all sources of electricity have increased costs & wholesale prices have increased. So it’s not the fault of just wind. But contracts should have been negotiated & written to be more conservative & flexible. They need to be smarter & more honest about relative costs, possible cost increases & risks. Too focused on the fantasy leaves reality to bite you back.
I would think that offshore wind farms would much more difficult and costly to maintain than land based wind farms. With time maintenance will get even more costly.