By David Wojick
Bringing offshore wind under control will be a complex process under administrative law, which few people know much about. As a result there is likely to be a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Some of this will be seriously funny.
A fine example, actually several, occurred during the Senate confirmation hearing for Governor Doug Burgum to be Secretary of Interior. The vehicle for this confusion is an exchange between Maine’s Senator Angus King and Burgum. Interior is the lead agency that leases offshore wind sites and oversees their development.
King basically asked Burgum for a commitment to carry forward the Department of the Interior’s offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Maine and offshore wind projects that are already in progress.
Burgum replied: “I’m not familiar with every project that the Interior has under way, but I’ll certainly be taking a look at all of those and if they make sense and they’re already in law, then they’ll continue.”
This sounds like Burgum agrees with King but given President Trump’s clearly stated policy of stopping offshore wind development it likely is not. It all depends on what “already in law” means.
Specifically “already in law” probably means the project already has all its numerous required federal permits and approvals. There are a few such projects, which are already under construction and they would be very difficult to stop at this stage. The Government would have to forcibly buy them out.
Meanwhile almost all of the forty or so offshore wind projects are not at this “already in law” stage. Many projects are just at the beginning of the approval process including the three off of Maine. To my knowledge two of those projects do not even have names much less required approvals.
If this interpretation of “already in law” is correct then what Burgum really said to King was “Not a chance, Senator.” That will be truly funny especially since the offshore wind press reported Burgum as agreeing with King.
The far deeper confusion is people thinking that the future of offshore wind is up to Burgum. While Interior has the lead and owns several key approvals a bunch of other essential approvals lie with other agencies. In some cases whole groups of agencies have to agree to an approval.
A big case in point is the central issue of wind development killing whales. The lead agency in whale protection is NOAA Fisheries which is in the Department of Commerce not Interior. I have yet to see the Secretary of Commerce even mentioned in discussions of offshore wind policy.
The whale protection authority is widely shared. NOAA’s authority to protect all whales is under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In particular they must approve the so-called harassment of whales caused by various phases of offshore wind development. I say so-called because what is approved is actual injury which is way beyond harassment.
But NOAA Fisheries also shares the authority to protect endangered whales from offshore wind under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Here the mechanism of approval is called a Biological Opinion. It must say that the adverse environmental impacts do not violate the ESA.
NOAA Fisheries has the lead but six different federal agencies have to sign off on a Biological Opinion that approves an offshore wind project. Two are in Interior, one each in Commerce, Defense and Transportation, plus EPA. Any one of these agencies can kill the approval.
No doubt there are other required approvals that I am not aware of. Some of these agencies may even be hostile to offshore wind development.
For example I have heard that the Coast Guard with good reason views offshore wind as a threat to navigation, as well as to search and rescue. The Navy and Air Force both have legitimate concerns about the adverse impact on defense radar systems and maybe a lot more.
The Biden Administration was able to keep all these agencies in line when it came to approving a wave of offshore wind projects. Trump may only need to release his agencies to do their proper job and the approvals will be greatly diminished. Time will tell.
In the meantime enjoy the confusion as it too will help end the wind mistake. Stay tuned to CFACT for ongoing coverage of this historic process.
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Save the whales! And migratory birds, and whatever else.
Any Wind Projects “Already in Law” can be easily stopped by making them unprofitable in the eyes of their Owners…remove the Government Mandated Subsidies AND “Take or Pay”…and BIG WIND blows away.
Not easily alas. Only Congress can do that and that is far from easy. Also the Atlantic States really want this stuff and are willing to pay for it. NY just did a deal paying about four times the wholesale rate at $155/MWh.
The state may have but are its citizens aware of just how much the virtue signalers are prepared to take from the citizens pockets?
David, I appreciate your work in the offshore wind area, calling the industry into account. I hope, though, that Trump does not simply prohibit construction of offshore wind projects. I think that would make the offshore wind industry martyrs, to the greens. Better, I think, to eliminate all subsidies, and let them die of their own inadequacy. If anybody can make those projects work without subsidies for construction or power purchase, more power to them. Based on Rud Istvan’s calculations I suspect the number of feasible offshore wind projects is zero.
Unfortunately only Congress can end the IRA subsidies and that is likely not possible since some Republicans like wind. My focus is what Trump can do which is far from clear at this point. A fun fight for sure.
Trump can intimidate those Republicans. I doubt they actually like wind- they just like $$$ and projects going to their turf.
Are any states offering subsidies and/or tax breaks? Wokeachusetts is planning on a very large amount of wind at sea- since almost nobody wants wind or solar “farms” on land. Without getting all that wind at sea- net zero here is certainly dead.
The left wing coastal states are doing lots of incentives. A big one is issuing green power production certificates that developers can sell to utilities that need them to meet their renewables portfolio targets. The money side is truly hairy so I stay away from it. I do engineering and science issues.
Good post.This will be as much fun to watch as yesterday’s Palisades presser where Trump schooled Bass over permit delays.
A good laugh a day at least. When the EO hit the top OSW trade group said they were “dismayed.” Seriously? How could they not see this coming? Trump said he would do this on “day one” in May.
One of the coolest things on the Trump side is the big study that defines the permitting pause was originally going to be limited to six months but the EO has no deadline. Here’s to an endless study.
Did not spot that. Funny. TY. Trump apparently has two modes:
Both equally effective. Smart guy.
It could take 6 months just to start the study. Agency, funding, staffing, scoping? Who does it is crucial.
hmmm…. in an area with a lot of offshore windmills with all their cables- I’d think that means no subs are going to get anywhere near them
Definitely a hazard to sub navigation, especially when each floater has one hot output cable. Same for whales of course. But a well designed enemy AI drone sub could carefully work its way in and hide there. Our Navy just launched the first of a class of 85′ long drone subs.
“Trump may only need to release his agencies to do their proper job…” That says just about all you need to know about the gladly departed Bribe’em Regime! I’m wracking my brain, but I can’t recall ONE policy from the last for years that was beneficial for America and her people; maybe I’ve been a little too busy with creative financing for buying groceries!
This isn’t complicated, wind and solar don’t work, don’t build them. Fossil fuel and nuclear do work, build them. There it’s settled.
Wildlife killed by onshore and offshore wind and solar doesn’t count. A price that has to be paid in order to save the planet.
Maybe OT, but I was just thinking about the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon due to overhunting (cheap food) before anyone realized they needed the huge numbers to propagate. (Maybe before there were even hunting regs?)
If they were still around, would windmills have done them in or would those vast numbers of them do in the windmills?
The simple way to get rid of wind and solar is to set merit order scheduling based on total cost of dispatchable power rather than marginal cost.
Wind ans solar would get scheduled to run only when all nuclear, coal, gas and hydro were at capacity. They would compete with any diesel generation.
I can produce my own on-demand electricity from solar/battery combination for a cost of AUD600/MWh. That is the real cost of dispatchable power from this source. Large, well-located solar farms may achieve a little better.
Hello to our UK and Irish friends – how did the offshore wind towers fare after the recent breezy weather?
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
https://grid.iamkate.com/
Happy to help.
Thousands of turbines to switch off for Storm Eowyn because winds are too strong.Millions will be paid to operators in compensation for missed output.
Is this true?
I doubt it. Payment is made if the operator is asked to stop because the system does not need the output, called curtailment. But no output due to high or low wind is not compensated.
I set a task for Perplexity AI to determine the cost of dispatchable power from a wind farm in central Victoria. Australia. This is the answer:
To estimate the cost of dispatchable electricity from a wind farm in western Victoria, Australia, with battery capacity for a 2-week wind drought and 300km transmission, we need to consider several components:
1. Wind farm costs:
The search results don’t provide specific costs for wind farms in western Victoria. However, we can use general estimates for wind power.
2. Battery storage costs:
Recent battery costs in Australia have decreased significantly:
– Current prices range from $300/kWh to $437/kWh for large-scale projects[1][5].
– For a 2-week capacity, we’d need to significantly scale up the battery size, which could increase costs.
3. Transmission costs:
For 300km of transmission:
– 200-299km/h speed design: $600,000/km
– Total transmission cost: $180 million (300km * $600,000/km)[3]
4. Calculation for 2-week storage:
Assuming a 100MW wind farm with a 35% capacity factor:
– Energy produced in 2 weeks: 100MW * 24 hours * 14 days * 0.35 = 11,760MWh
– Battery cost at $400/kWh: 11,760MWh * $400,000/MWh = $4.704 billion
5. Total capital cost estimate:
Wind farm (100MW) + Battery + Transmission
≈ $200 million + $4.704 billion + $180 million = $5.084 billion
6. Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE):
Using a simplified LCOE calculation with a 10% discount rate over 20 years:
LCOE = (Capital Cost * Annuity Factor) / (Annual Energy Production)
Annuity Factor (10%, 20 years) ≈ 0.11746
Annual Energy Production = 100MW * 8760 hours * 0.35 = 306,600MWh
LCOE ≈ ($5.084 billion * 0.11746) / 306,600MWh
≈ $1,950/MWh or $1.95/kWh
This estimate is significantly higher than conventional power sources due to the large battery storage requirement for a 2-week wind drought. It’s important to note that this is a simplified calculation and actual costs could vary based on specific project details, technological advancements, and economies of scale.
The power supply systems in modern economies are predominantly on-demand because it is not easy to control demand. A simple change in scheduling from marginal cost to full cost of dispatchable generation would kill all wind and solar.
Approvals or not, none of these projects will be able to get financing and insurance at reasonable rates. Too much risk.
.
If Trump takes away the subsidies, because of emergency declaration, these projects will never exist, and the money will be used for drill, baby drill