The tumult in US offshore wind development has taken several steps lately, some forward, some not so much. Here is a quick overview of three serious events that are worth careful consideration.
First is the question of whether the developers will be able to bring forward their cost crisis and stick it to the ratepayers. As regular readers know, a lot of offshore wind project contracts with the client States have been pulled by the developers. They hope to come back with a higher price to cover their suddenly increased costs. The big Danish developer Orsted just pulled another contract in Maryland.
Well, the first of these new high-cost offers has indeed been accepted, in this case, by New Jersey. After all, the governor says, they want to go the impossible 100% renewables route as quickly as they can, making costs politically irrelevant. New Jersey ratepayers be damned.
There is a good chance that the other North Atlantic states will follow New Jersey, especially New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which have huge offshore wind construction targets.
Possibly countering this big push for wind is a major new lawsuit that has just been filed. The complaint is here: https://www.scribd.com/document/700695015/Offshore-Wind-Lawsuit
This suit alleges something that is obviously true, having been widely discussed here at CFACT. The Federal agencies that have quickly issued the offshore wind permits have simply ignored the destructive environmental effects. This is especially true for the collective impact of combinations of nearby projects.
Thus, the argument is procedural rather than substantive. Plaintiffs are not asking the Court to rule on the environmental science, which Courts are reluctant to do. They just want the Feds to do the proper job as mandated by the applicable environmental protection laws, of which there are several.
The complaint has two dimensions of consideration. One is the adverse impact of wind development on fish and, therefore, on the fishing industry. Thus, one of the complainants is a fishing trade association. One of my favorite legal maxims is “Never argue substance when you can argue procedure.”
The other dimension is the adverse impact on endangered species, especially whales. One of the plaintiffs is the Save the Right Whale Coalition. Here, the narrow issue is the threat posed by enormous offshore wind development to the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.
Speaking of enormous, here is a good picture of one of the unbelievably huge monopiles driven into the sea floor to hold up an offshore wind turbine generator. The pile dwarfs the people. https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/03/eew-rolls-out-first-ocean-wind-1-monopile/
The noise of this pile driving is extremely loud, disrupting the lives of whales and other endangered species. This disruption is not only recognized by the Feds, it is specifically authorized by NOAA. The disruption is called harassment, and every offshore project has a pile driving harassment authorization, which typically includes thousands of hapless marine mammals.
That this systematic harassment can cause deadly behavior on the part of the thousands of harassed critters is one of the top ongoing complaints against offshore wind development. For example, scaring whales into heavy ship traffic where they can be struck and killed.
Which brings us to our third big event. The Feds have just released the final version of their so-called “North Atlantic Right Whale and Offshore Wind Strategy”. I say so-called because there is no strategy.
The Federal plan is to drive the thousands of piles on a bunch of big projects, many at the same time, and see what happens to the whales. The word “harassment” does not even occur in the document. Deadly harassment is simply ignored.
If the Right Whales go extinct, there is no way to bring them back, so watching and waiting is not a protection strategy. This is the kind of systematic denial that the lawsuit calls out.
So there it is. The price of offshore wind may be going way up, but a lawsuit is asking for a more complete look at the adverse impacts. Meanwhile, the impact of offshore wind on severely endangered whales continues to be ignored by the development agencies.
The times they are a changing. Stay tuned to CFACT.
Eugene Volokh says the lawyers’ true super power is to turn any case into a procedural question.
While I consider current environmental impact law to be in serious need of reform, I also think it should be exploited to the maximum to stop this green virtue signaling.
With Germany, UK, France and the rest of the EU facing revolt of farmers, industry, etc. and shifting to the right politically, the end is nigh. It’s not a giant step to citizens adopting tactics of extremist ‘enviro’ activists (damaging pipelines, starting forest fires, etc.) to sabotage these renewable monstrosities that don’t even work.
Yes, offshore wind is far too vulnerable to terrorist attack, a few well-placed rifle shots in one the blades would induce enough vibration for a shutdown/replacement. Very costly.
Below grade, small scale modular nuclear reactors such as NuScale will install had better be the go-to low carbon electricity source next decade. These 40 yearlong failed experiments with wind and solar are destroying us as well as whales.
NuScale is dead in the US as of now.
Their overbuilt passive safe system is just TOO expensive to build. It uses massive amounts of concrete to hold the fuel in water if a catastrophic failure were to occur.
The Surrey and North Anna plants built in the 70s are now good for 80 and 60 years respectively. NEVER had any minor problem, much less a catastrophic failure.
3 Mile Island was a failure of a corporate structure, not a Nuclear plant.
Fukushima was a stupid location of the emergency generators IN THE BASEMENT, in a seaside tsunami zone. BAD design.
Chernobyl was due to stupid human testing in an incompetent manner and no containment structure.
Brandon just gave 1.5 billion to reopen a Michigan Nuclear plant that was forced by Dems to close down then bought by a different company to do the shut down. Think he is buying votes? YEP! Think the second company is all cronied up with the Dems? No doubt in my mind. AND 1 Billion to keep a Cali plant operating.
Two New Jersey Offshore wind projects, mostly by European companies.
The turbines will be made in Europe, shipped by specialized European ships, elected by Europeans.
New Jersey folks will be soooo lucky to get to do some of the maintenance, with mostly European replacement parts.
MAKE EUROPE GREAT AGAIN
One project for 2400 MW to be completed in 2031/2032, FIRST YEAR cost $112.50/MWh, escalating at ?% for 20 years
The second project at 1342 MW, no completion date, FIRST YEAR cost $131.00/MWh, escalating at ?% for 20 years
The escalations are the NJ economy killers, which nitwit Murphy and co-conspirators are perpetrating
If anyone has escalation %, please let me know
https://whyy.org/articles/new-jersey-board-public-utilities-offshore-wind-farms-invenergy-energy-attentive-energy/#:~:text=New%20Jersey%20approved%20two%20massive%20offshore%20wind%20projects%20Wednesday%2C%20expected,billion%20into%20the%20state%27s%20economy.
Here are some prices with no escalation
New York State had signed contracts with EU big wind companies for four offshore wind projects
Sometime later, the companies were trying to coerce an additional $25.35 billion (per Wind Watch) from New York ratepayers and taxpayers over at least 20 years, because they had bid at lower prices than they should have.
New York State denied the request on October 12, 2023; “a deal is a deal”, said the Commissioner
Owners want a return on investment of at least 10%/y, if bank loans for risky projects are 6.5%/y, and project cost inflation and uncertainties are high
The about 3.5% is a minimum for all the years of hassles of designing, building, erecting, and paperwork of a project
The project prices, with no subsidies, would be about two times the agreed contract price, paid by Utilities to owners.
The reduction is due to US subsidies provided, per various US laws
All contractors had bid too low. When they realized there would be huge losses, they asked for higher contract prices.
It looks like the contract prices will need to be at least $150/MWh, for contractors to make money. Those contract prices would be at least 60% higher than in 2021
Oersted, Denmark, Sunrise wind, contract price $110.37/MWh, contractor needs $139.99/MWh, a 27% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 1 wind, contract price $118.38/MWh, contractor needs $159.64/MWh, a 35% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 2 wind, contract price $107.50/MWh, contractor needs $177.84/MWh, a 66% increase
Equinor, Norway, Beacon Wind, contract price $118.00/MWh, contractor needs $190.82/MWh, a 62% increase
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/liars-lies-exposed-as-wind-electricity-price-increases-by-66-wake
NOTE: Empire Wind 2, 1260 MW, near Long- Island, was cancelled.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/equinor-bp-cancel-contract-sell-offshore-wind-power-new-york-2024-01-03/
NOTE: The above prices compare with the average New England wholesale price of about 5 c/kWh, during the 2009 – 2022 period, 13 years, courtesy of:
.
Gas-fueled CCGT plants, with low-cost, low-CO2, very-low particulate/kWh
Nuclear plants, with low-cost, near-zero CO2, zero particulate/kWh
Hydro plants, with low-cost, near-zero-CO2, zero particulate/kWh
Why don’t they consider drilling and cementing-in foundation support? It’s quieter. They certainly don’t rank the importance of all their palaver on preserving ecodiversity very high on their agenda. Wiping out whales to save the planet is a hell of a legacy. Why not just go for the global centrally planned governance that is the real objective for which this global warming feint is just the window dressing. Yeah, we’re going to have to go to battle over this governance stuff anyway, but we could save the $100 trillion wasted on the window dressing!
Keep it simple require all offshore New England turbines to be floating instead of pile mounted. The UK pays about 50% more CFD (contract for difference payment above a base cost) for floating turbines vs conventional offshore. They still require anchoring to the sea floor but less “disturbance”. What’s a few pennies/KWh (5 cents?) for saving the whales?
Keep it even simpler, require all offshore New England turbines to be ditched in favour of nuclear
There are no CFDs awarded yet to any floating offshore wind farm. There are two floaters on 3.5ROCs/MWh – Hywind and Kincardine. That’s a subsidy worth around £230/MWh on top of market price, recently around £70-80/MWh.
The next CFD round, AR6 (do not confuse with IPCC reports!) offers maximum bid prices in 2012 money of £73/MWh for ordinary offshore wind, and £176/MWh for floating offshore wind. That’s around £100/MWh and £242/MWh in today’s money.
The Crown Estate has just announced that it has prequalified lease bidders for sites in the Celtic Sea, aimed at securing 4.5GW of floating offshore wind. This is a separate process to the CFD auction.
At some point, fossil fuels have got to save the whales, again.
It’s because those aren’t the right whales. Isn’t it in the gulf of Mexico( oil/Florida country) that they’re trying to implement a SPEED limit boats to protect the whales there (a variant of the right whale,no less)????
There’s few whale deaths from boats, but many from wind farms.
Nope .. nothing odd going on here.
Every installation of major infrastructure should include a valid cost-benefit analysis. The environmental analysis portion of the request for approval should also include a valid cost-benefit analysis. I see no benefit in these offshore projects so what is driving them?
Anything “offshore” is an order of magnitude more expensive capital cost than on-shore if its intended lifespan is a couple of decades of storms, waves, salt corrosion…
To the radical left and enviro-crooks the environment is just a fluffy figure-piece hauled out every once in a while to silence critics by spraying a veneer of virtue over whatever evil destructive policies they are promoting at the time. The same is true about every time they promote energy, industrial and economic policies they claim are aimed at helping the disadvantaged just before they destroy the lives of those same disadvantaged through sky high costs and reduced access to the necessities of life.
The East coast wind projects are their trifecta of sabotage. In one imbecilic policy move they can destroy the coastal environment, kill the whales, and make electricity a luxury only wealthy elites can afford and only when it is intermittently available. When this is all done and the eastern seaboard becomes a backwater of decaying civilization they will all report back to their minders in China and Russia and collect their bonuses.
If the right whales go extinct, how much do you want to bet that the global warming people will blame it on the oil companies and on capitalism?
The US working hard to stay behind again?
The Race to Build the World’s Tallest Wind Turbine
Thanks for the laugh.
They have to go offshore with their ugly unreliables-
Nick Cater: Inside the green lobby’s ‘disingenuous’ attempts to smear the everyday Australians rallying against the reckless rollout of renewable energy | Sky News Australia
which will really pee off the esplanade elites