Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@weschenbach on eX-Twitter)
Back on March 29, 2021, the Biden White House took on the following goals:
Hmmm, sez I, seems a mite ambitious. Current US grid-connected offshore wind is a mere 0.17 gigawatts … so we’d need to do ~ 175 times as much as we’ve done to date and do it in a short six years.
So I divided it out. There are 65 months until 2030. Thirty gigawatts is thirty thousand megawatts, less the 174 megawatts in place, that’s 29,826 megawatts more total generating capacity needed.
29,826 megawatts divided by 65 months means we’d have to add offshore wind generation to the tune of 465 additional megawatts of generation capacity per month. Every month. Starting now.
Get real. That’s not remotely possible. The biggest US offshore windfarm just came on line, 132 MW capacity. To reach the White House goal, every month we’d need to build three new windfarms of that size. No way that can happen. It’s just numbers picked out of the air to gain popular support.
Next, I researched the length of time it takes to get an offshore wind farm online. Here’s what ChatGPT sez:
The time from the proposal of an offshore wind farm to its grid connection typically ranges from 7 to 10 years. This timeline can be broken down into several phases:
Pre-development and Planning (1-2 years): This phase involves site identification, feasibility studies, and initial environmental assessments.
Permitting and Approvals (3-5 years): Securing the necessary permits and approvals is often the most time-consuming part of the process. This includes detailed environmental impact assessments, consultations with stakeholders, and obtaining state and federal permits.
Construction (2-3 years): Once all approvals are secured, construction of the wind farm, including the installation of turbines and subsea cables, takes place. This phase also includes the grid connection process.
Commissioning and Testing (several months): After construction, the turbines are tested, and the wind farm is gradually brought online.
Seems unreasonable but likely factual. So what that means is that unless a project is well underway right now, it won’t be online until after 2030.
Under the Biden Administration, there have been nine offshore wind projects approved. These propose building a total of 13 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity. However, only two of these projects are actually under construction or completed —Vineyard Wind, located off the coast of Massachusetts, and South Fork Wind, located near the coasts of Rhode Island and New York.
South Fork Wind just came online. This gives us a chance to look at some actual cost figures. It’s the biggest wind farm to date, a 132-megawatt addition to offshore wind. It cost $637 million.
(Note that to reach the 30 GW goal, we’d need no less than 225 wind farms of this size … but I digress)
However, Federal subsidies added $191 million to that, plus another couple of hundred million or so from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Stop and consider. Some private company is building a six-hundred-million-dollar white elephant in the middle of the ocean, and it’s getting paid four hundred million of taxpayer money to do so.
So … what does the New York consumer get for all of this more than generous support?
The consumer gets wind power costing FOUR TIMES AS MUCH as the current cost of power in New York.
Stop and consider. Even when the developer gets two-thirds of the cost paid by the taxpayer, offshore wind power is still four times as expensive.
And of course, that doesn’t even touch the cost of maintaining backup power for the times when there’s no wind … the cartoonist Josh sees that clearly.
Here’s more about the real-world cost of offshore wind power in New York.
What’s next?
Well, I’m sure that what’s next is the Harris/Walz campaign will declare that they are 100% behind expensive, intermittent, unreliable wind power, and will claim that if elected, they’ll do what they already said they’d do when Ms. Harris was last elected, which was to screw the consumer and the taxpayer with the huge subsidies, tax breaks, and electricity costs of offshore wind.
Oh, yeah. They claim that the 30 GW of offshore wind will “avoid 78 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions”. Tens of millions of tonnes, sounds impressive, right?
But IF the IPCC is correct, and that’s a big if, this will reduce the temperature in the year 2050 by …
…
… wait for it …
…
… 0.0016°C. Which is almost three-thousandths of one degree F.
Can we please pass a law saying people proposing any laws or regulations in the name of “climate change” be required to tell us (and show their math) how much actual temperature difference that will make by 2050?
Go ahead. Ask the folks in New York, “Are you willing to pay four times the going rate for electricity for the rest of your life to MAYBE cool the globe by three-thousandths of one degree Fahrenheit a quarter century from now?”
Regards to all,
w.
As Always: I ask that when you comment you quote the exact words you’re discussing. Avoids endless foolishness.
The Math. TRIGGER WARNING!! I did say “show the math” didn’t I … but this is just arithmetic. Take heart.
Anything after a hashmark “#” on a line is a comment. A line starting with “>” is an instruction to the computer. A line starting with “[1]” is the result of the calculation.
> (gtco2 = 78e6 * 20 / 1e9) # "gtco2" is total gigatonnes CO2 avoided, 2030-2050
[1] 1.56 # gigatonnes
> (deltappmv = gtco2 * 12 / 44 / 2.13) # convert GT C02 to GT carbon, then to ppmv (2.13 GTonnes C = 1 ppmv)
[1] 0.20 # ppmv difference in 2050 due to wind farm
> (fullchange = (gettrend(co2ts) * 26 + 425)) # current atmospheric CO2 trend extended from 2024 to 2050
[1] 467.6 # atmospheric ppmv CO2 in 2050
> (theforce = log2((fullchange + deltappmv) / fullchange) * 3.7) # W/m2 forcing change due to 2050 CO2 difference
[1] 0.0023 # W/m2
> (tempchange = .7 * theforce) # temperature change from the CO2 forcing
[1] 0.0016 # °C
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> The biggest US offshore windfarm just came on line, 132 GW capacity.
Maybe 132 MW?
Thanks, fixed.
w.
Testing something out at 132 MW is what we should be spending taxpayer loot on.
I might appear to be a complete arse hole but I’m not.
You come up with something I can believe in and here’s your “grant” to investigate further
Seriously, there must be a F/T of new ways of doing things or solving particular problems.
We should look into them as a “group”. Some have already shown up their deficiencies though.They should have the brakes banged on right quick.
Test at 132 MW and saddle taxpayers with the cost? Really? Pass!
Why not test it out with one freakin’ turbine, and get some real-world costs and data? If you want to spend taxpayer money on something, how about you stop there?
Because if it truly is cheaper than the competition, then why are we subsidizing it??? Let it compete in the marketplace.
Or alternatively, since it is obviously more expensive than the competition, then why are we subsidizing it??? Why are we screwing around with it at all?
We should absolutely do that testing before taking $400 million from taxpayers for electricity that’s 4 times more expensive than current sources. That’s madness.
w.
Why are we doing it?
Because some night when no one is paying much attention the boiling ocean is going to sneak on shore and parboil everyone. We have absolutely no choice!!
Doesn’t that make as much sense as every other doom claim?
I worked in a power plant many years ago (1970s). The units involved in my project were 160 MW units built in the early 1950s. They were tiny compared to the big baseload units of early 1970s vintage. Why does a whole 132 MW sound small to me?
Sue a few Green Blob NGOs to deal with their obstructionism, and build standard nukes.
Yeah, and I see no co-use for dead whales.
Whale oil to offset FF?
Where can you sue them, and win?
Fairytale Land
Says Griff, the original unicorn breeder.
One should stress that the quoted numbers for installed capacity are all ‘name-plate capacity’. Windmills typically produce an average of about 20 to 30% or less, of that name-plate, throughout the year… and all of that power, is intermittent, i.e. next to useless.
With a calculate 4.3 years mean time to failure.
Basically anything coming online today will be broken before 2030…. on average.
Wind “expensive” Willis?
Nick Stokes comes here frequently to tell us that wind is “free”.
Maybe it’s “expensively free”, or “freely expensive”?
Let’s call the whole thing off, is my suggestion.
The old sailors had a saying:
“The wind is free … but everything else is expensive.”
Best to you and yours,
w.
The wind is free. All you have to do is build the ship and the sails and pray you don’t get becalmed!
Do commercial ships and warships still use sails? Maybe something better came along?
(Are aircraft carriers armed with kites?)
Would that make Kite Bombs a thing then?
Sorry. I didn’t think it through.
Balloon bombs would be a more advanced technology. 😎
Oil and Gas are free too. What you pay is to get it to where you need it in form you can use plus any taxes imposed by government.
“Renewables” are the same with negative taxes aka subsidies.
Wrong word. Every time we use their ‘word’ – ie; Renewables, we give a free kick to the other side. The marketing machine behind the Renewables chose that ‘word’ for it’s positive connotations. A far more accurate ‘word’ to use with its negative connotations is the “Unreliables”..
The ONLY thing free about Wind is the Low Density Intermittent Fuel source. Due to the Low Density nature of Wind (And Solar), harvesting that energy is damn expensive and acreage intensive
Very nice Willis, well done.
Math is hard. Apparently for greenies, arithmetic is harder.
Remember Obama’s warning:”Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to eff things up.”
He did when he inadvertently gave us Harris as the Dem candidate.
That’s how DEI works.
Sorry, but Harris’ candidacy was not and never was “inadvertent”.
She never stayed in any position she ever held for more than a few years, except on her back. When you are a political climber, that just cannot be done.
Her entire political career was planned out from the very beginning. She has never held a job in private industry.
Now do DEFRs
Willis, you don’t really need to do math or tax.
Try any search of “highest energy prices on Earth”
It is no coincidence that there are some in the top four that have been there for a very long time.
Germany, Denmark, The UK and Spain.
No need for math, they all have something in common.
They all destroyed their reliable generation capacity (Coal/Gas/Nuclear) a long time ago and can’t go back.They are the “energy” kids holding out a bowl that says “will wank for coins” …
Our new (UK) PM has suggested that we are all going to hate the October budget … Look up what that €unt is spending the supposed missing loot on … It’s like there’s some Virus spreading from California and we caught it some time ago …
Erm. Also, Willis, Is Dr. X of “Duke” still around?.
Was reading an earlier piece here and thought of something that I wished either you or him were to look at the basic principles.
There are few I trust to examine and criticise a “stupid” idea but I would like an opinion that I could trust.
The idea looks feasible but but I would like the opinion of someone such as yourself or another Quack (at “Duke”) I trust here …
Dr. Brown of Duke hasn’t posted on here for a while, but I’m always up for something new. What’s the idea?
w.
A really obvious comment has gone missing.
Mine : “Search the Net for the most expensive energy prices in Earth … Germany, UK, Denmark and Spain”.
They all have one thing in common … Can you guess …
Censorship of facts
From elsewhere –
Descartes – “I think, therefore I am”
Now
Descartes (UK) – “I think, therefore I am in jail”
There is an old WUWT article showing the almost perfect linear relationship between rhe price of electricity in countries and the percentage of Wind and Solar in their energy mix.
I crunched the numbers last year:
Thank you for this.
Italy is an outlier (much more expensive than expected), but the correlation is otherwise very close indeed.
Nature doesn’t charge for any fuel. Not coal. Not oil. Not gas. Not uranium,
Always enjoy Willis’ contributions, brightens my day, possibly darkens others day.
Logic and math only darken the day for Pollyannas, unicorns and rainbows.
Did you know there are no rainbows at night? Same as for solar power.
__________________________________________________________________________
Kinda like the projections/predictions for sea level rise.
One has to ask when is this increase in production and
sea level rise going to begin to happen. Will there be
trumpets heralding these events?
We just all need to clap and proclaim “I do believe in Wind Generation…I do believe in Wind Generation…I do believe in Wind Generation”
Sea level rise will lift the turbine further into the air stream reducing climate change therefore dropping sea level reducing wind power increasing climate change.
Gotta love oscillations
Regarding what ChatGBT sez, no mention of whether the necessary scarce construction plant will be available when it is needed. Much of that plant is already booked for years into the future.
Work Boat magazine had a story several months ago about the first American built Service Operations Vessel . Seems American shipyards are getting into the act.
https://www.workboat.com/wind/first-u-s-flag-sov-christened-in-new-orleans
Wind Europe warned back in June 2022 that there was going to be a worldwide shortage of the three types of ships required to build offshore wind farms from 2024/25.
“a shortage of Foundation Installation vessels (FIVs) and Wind Turbine Installation Vessels (WTIVS) already by 2024/25”
For Cable Laying Vessels (CLVs) that connect the wind farms to the shore “the gap between supply and demand would be even greater over the next eight years”
A related Biden green arithmetic problem. In 2022 he got $7.5 billion allocated to build 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030. According to the ever green and Biden supporting WaPo, as of 3/29/2024 exactly 7 had been built, in just 4 states.
Some Biden arithmetic. $7.5 billion/8 years is $940 million per year. In two years, that equals $940/7 or $269million per charging station. What a deal.
But there are several chargers at each station, so way to go Brandon, cackle, cackle.
Some further points.
First, I screwed up and forgot to multiply 940* 2 years. So the real cost per charge station is double. Number of chargers per Station becomes rounding error except maybe to Cackles.
Second, under Biden the number of individual public EV chargers ‘doubled’ from 29000 to 61000. By comparison, there are 145000 gas stations in the US each averaging between 4 and 8 gas pumps. Say 6 per, so ~ 870,000 pumps. EV range anxiety is rational.
Third, per 1000 road miles in the US there are 104 gas pumps. There are 2.2 EV chargers, because none in the boonies.
So Biden mandate for 60%EV by 2030 is as realistic as his wind mandate eviscerated above by WE arithmetic.
OTOH, Biden’s debate performance showed just how cognitively impaired he is. So this sort of arithmetic is way beyond his cognitive capabilities.
Spoken as someone who just lost (end May) his significant other to pneumonia, after dealing for a few years with her growing cognitive impairment. When you live with it, you don’t need to be a neurologist to recognize it.
So sorry for your loss. But you are so right–when you are around someone who is cognitively impaired (in my case, my sister), you know this when you see it. You don’t need to be a doctor.
Wife in my case. Then comes the void that cannot be filled.
Ah, my dear friend, I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. And although I know words do little, my compassion and support is all I have to offer, and I offer it to you with an open heart.
My very best to you,
w.
Love.
Very sorry to hear that.
A further point. I can get off and on the highway in 7 to 10 minutes and have fuel for over 400 miles — if my bladder cooperates.
Let’s go Brandon
Let’s go Brenda
All that Big Green went into Someone’s Pocket but who’s pocket?
I’m still waiting for that shill check from the oil companies and the Koch Brothers.
Fortunately very little of budgeted money has actually been spent. Apparently there is a shortage of actual contractors who meet all the progressive social justice qualification criteria buried in the program rules. Perhaps the bulk of the money can be clawed back by the next administration.
The comments about nature not charging for its energy bounty has me thinking of a what a land owner should charge for the use of wind blowing across the owner’s property. For oil extraction the standard form used to be a “Producer’s 88” and it called for a 1/8th royalty interest to be paid from net production. I know wind projects typically involve rental, not royalty, agreements but is the rental fee tied to production and is it close to the 1/8th oil royalty rate?
Also has anyone tallied up the fair rental value of all the sea surface used for the 30GW of wind projects and is that cost included in cost calculations? I believe all proposed sea surface wind projects are sited on state or federal owned waters and the rental fees should be passed through to rate-payers. Are they?
So what’s your prediction? How much Offshore windpower will be build by 2030?
None because it costs too much to harvest cheap energy
So we ignore all current developments worldwide because…?
We ignore them because they are feel-good green fantasies propped up by endless subsidies and backed up by fossil fuels, so if you add a GW of wind you need to add a GW of conventional power for when the wind isn’t blowing. You end up paying for your energy twice …
w.
We ignore them because they’re the preferred energy source of the Ignorant
We ignore them because…they keep demanding ever increasing graft to continue construction plans. They’re just TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE
Only China can answer that question. The whole fantasy depends on them burning massive amounts of coal to make the turbines and all the supporting infrastructure.
Wind turbines are net coal consumers. They just transfer the coal consumption to China.
Still no source for an eroi below 1 I guess?
China has over 30 GW offshore wind installed.
Says the CCP’s “information bureau”.
(Mind you, they were straight up on some things –
they never said the “vaccines” were “safe and effective”.
So there’s that . . . )
I provided the numbers below in a post I did earlier. You could get 7.5Mt of appalacian coal for USD637M. Feed that to your firming power station and you could get 50MW continuously for 40 years. At least three times the life of the offshore wind farm because 50MW is 37% of 132MW and that is higher CF than the average offshore wind farm is achieving.
Wind energy provided 2.2% of China’s energy consumption in 2023. Don’t be fooled by the capacity illusion. It is the energy out that matters.
So what. Wind supplied just 9% of China’s electricity in 2023 whilst coal provided 70%
The real question should be –
“how much of the 2030 installed offshore wind power will still be working in 2035?”
Your starter for 10%, MU.
An alternative for the investment would be to buy 7.5Mt of Appalacian coal at $83/t and burn it in a 50MW power station (needed to firm the wind) for the next 40 years providing reliable, steady output rather than exporting the coal to China so China can burn it there to make the wind turbines and vessels needed to install and service them.
Wind turbines are more coal intensive than just burning the coal. The whole fantasy is maintained by China’s willingness to consume coal to make all the transition stuff.
This underlines the stupidity of it all. USA exporting coal to China to make the expensive junk that will adorn the US coastline rather than just burning it in the power stations needed to firm the wind output.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-thermal-coal-exports-hit-5-year-highs-top-5-billion-2023-2024-02-01/
The coal has to be burnt somewhere to make the wind turbines and associated junk. Why not just burn it in the USA in the existing power stations needed to firm the intermittent generation and get rid of all the expensive junk being built in China.
Why not build a wind industry in the US?
All the ingredients still have to come from China.
Why not just use the uranium and gas the US has?
Making wind turbines and all the supporting infrastructure requires a lot of coal. USA would need to remove all the constraints on burning coal to make any manufacturing industry viable against what China can do because China’s only constraint is how fast they can mine the coal. They are now using monstrous 7m high long wall chocks so ever improving productivity that USA has no ability to match.
There is no economic sense in building wind turbines because they consume more coal during their manufacture, transport and system integration than they can displace during their operating lifetime. They are net coal consumers.
Still no source for an eroi below 1
If the eroi was more than 1, then, certainly, there would be wind turbine manufacturers using the fruits of their turbines to make more turbines. Please provide examples, I’ll wait…
I am not claiming the EROI of wind is less than 1.
I am stating wind turbines are net consumers of coal and provide the easily verifiable numbers that support that claim.. You would get three times the energy from just burning coal for the same price as an offshore wind farm. And the power would be available on-demand without dependence on the wind.
It is more economic to burn the coal to make electricity than the far more expensive and complicated path of making wind turbines that have a guaranteed output of zero, supplying a grid occasionally that needs all the existing infrastructure plus a lot more stuff for stability just to keep the lights on.
NetZero is a fantasy because there is no technology available to use wind energy to make wind turbines. The reason China is making the bulk of the transition stuff is that they have no artificial controls on burning coal.
And that’s assuming that the wind would be displacing coal as opposed to CCGT fueled by natural gas.
The materials required to produce 1MWHr of electricity with onshore wind is about 10X the materials needed for the same electric energy produced by nuclear. The materials needed to produce 1MWHr from offshore wind is even higher than onshore wind.
The materials required to produce a unit of electric energy (note energy not power) with CCGT is less than nuclear. Nuclear does result in overall CO2 emissions.
Why make oneself dependent upon a weather dependent energy source that falls apart in bad weather
Yes.
A Rube Goldberg-designed system comes to mind.
You have me thinking of a hypothetical scam. Suppose I bought a cheap and barren piece of land in Texas that had an unencumbered gas well capable of continuouly generating generating gas that could fire a 1 mW generator. Let’s call it Verderancho. I build a rickety wind generator and pave the rest of the site with solar panels. With Home Depot parts I wire the gas generator into the solar and wind feeds. I tell the buyer that Verderancho is unique as it runs reliably 24/7 because the wind always picks up when the sun doesn’t shine (thanks to my undisclosed Home Depot gas gen tie-in). I get 14 cents a kWh claiming this is clean energy. I could sell my gas for about 7-10 cents, and do when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, so my effective average cost of production is about a cent a kW. I make 13cents x1000x24=$3120 a day. I’m gonna buy a bigger place!
I’m not sure I’d trust a person who came up with such a scheme. :^)
Can I get a stake in this?
Gullibility is a booming industry in the western world at the moment, and your scam is just made for these conditions.
You are thinking way to small. Why not 13,000MW.
Exactly the same scheme but on a massive scale so it gets the big money interested.
Australia now has a mature scam. The RET (Renewable Energy Theft) was legislated in 2000 and has been doing wonders for transfer from average Joe to wealthy Mal for 23 years now:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/RenewableEnergy
It is so ingrained that no one even recognises that it is a scam.
It is slowly coming to an end in Australia because the not so poor households can make their own electricity. Still winter here but mid morning to mid afternoon rooftops are the largest power generator in Australia
https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time
Rooftop production is peaking around 40% of total demand at midday and the country is still months from peak sunshine.
The grid scale wind and solar generators off-load when the price is more negative than their subsidy. So prices are usually negative from 9am to 4pm meaning their window for scamming is closing. Most scammers are now realising this and taking their money elsewhere where average households cannot make their own power.
AUS energy is a cesspool run by politicians and scamsters, not by engineers and resource owners. So the place doesn’t count. Back to my Texas Verderancho hyopthetical, at least I bought the ranch, the rickety wind machine and the used solar panels capable of a plated output of 1MW. I ran the hypothetical scam fair and square. What has me wondering is how I can cash in on the much bigger scam of rent-free offshore wind farming. As far as I can tell there is no rent paid for the wind sites, and in fact the opposite after the many layers of subsidies are considered. Free land, or ocean, and gobs of money besides. I’m thinking of VerdeMarRancho now.
You need to find your first nations heritage and stake a claim for the sacred sea serpents that inhabit the east coast of the USA. You may not get an enduring rent but you could get a handsome payday to shut up about your claim.
There is plenty of precedent for such claims. Here is an example:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/indigenous-elders-are-suing-a-massive-gas-company-and-the-australian-government/
You just need to claim you are first nation. It is not woke to challenge anyone claiming they are First Nation.
Capacity is one thing, but actual generation is another. Whenever has any of these wind farms actually met their capacity? Good work Willis. So much for cheap wind energy. Factor in the entire cost over the life of these wind farms and. I bet wind farms are uber expensive a d not cheap at all: construction, maintenance and decommissioning.
… and 3 blades broke off the latest and greatest installed ones somewhat prematurely?
Doesn’t fit the computer modelling. Discard erroneous outliars!
The windy State of South Australia salutes NSW taxpayers-
‘Fanciful’ to tie power bill cap to coal-plant deal (msn.com)
Hurry up guys as we’ve done our bit to save the planet-
Construction complete on South Australian side of new electricity interconnector – ElectraNet
The link will enable NSW to get power from SA when they do not need it while supplying SA with power when they need it. My bet is the SA consumers will be lower on the list than NSW consumers when push comes to shove and there is a critical shortage of power.
And ditto with the interconnector to Vic brown coal but they all want to emulate SA with fickles so stand by for the emergency diesel gennys when the greenouts get serious. You have to break a few battlers to wear the Save the Planet badge.
I think the US has bigger problems than this. At the moment its racking up national debt at the rate of over $6B per day. So to put the $600M into perspective, its the amount of debt racked up from start of work to morning tea.
Jobs are a cost. If hiring all those people merely produces what already is being produced without them, it is the epitome of economic ignorance and idiocy. Or Net Zero as it is known.
The Cartoon ‘Greening the Land’ is brilliant and says everything you need to know about Green Lunatic Addiction.
Green Living is all in the mind but it is one hell of an addiction to get rid of – much worse even than smoking or alcoholism which do at least give some pleasure in their life cycles. There is no pleasure in Green Living (just ask the birds and bats …
And all this EcoLoony madness to solve a non-problem. CO2 is neither a pollutant, nor the primary driver of so claimed climate change, aka global warming.