By Jack Dini ——Bio and Archives--August 26, 2023
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People don't like bird bashing giants and thumping infrasound. And who could have seen that spending trillions turning the electricity grid into a giant weather machine would make energy costs higher, thus piling wood on the inflationary fires that have come back to bite wind turbine manufacturers? (1)
The wind industry should be flying high but instead is entrapped by a cornucopia of troubles. Projects are too often held up by red tape and nimbyism, while contracts signed years ago have become oneous due to material and logistics cost inflation. Anywhere you look around the world, wind is facing serious problems.
Britain
The offshore wind industry has long been the poster child of Britain's push into green energy. Championed by politicians as a controversy-free alternative to onshore wind and solar farms, the Government wants offshore wind capacity to surge from 13 gigawatts today to 50 gigawatts by 2030. Yet behind the scenes, the picture looks far less rosy. Key projects are buckling under the weight of spiraling costs and rigid planning rules. (2)
In a move that gives lie to years of propaganda claiming falling costs, the wind industry's leading lobbyists have written to the government, threatening to abandon the UK unless there are hugely increased subsidies for their companies. (3)
Sweden
Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has halted a gigantic offshore wind project, one that would supply electricity to 1.5 million households if built. Vattenfall's decision to halt work on the wind farm has significant financial consequences. It means a 537 million dollar loss. This strategy reorientation threatens UK climate targets. (4)
Australia
Despite adding more cheap renewable per person than nearly anywhere on Earth, for some inexplicable reason Australia's electricity prices rose 18% last year and are set to rise another 20 to 30% this winter. Last year was a bloodbath on the wholesale electricity market. Those costs have fed through to retail. (5)
Early May in Australia the output from all 79 industrial wind plants disappeared overnight from 6 GW to just 0.4 GW. Australian unreliable renewables fell from 62% to 4% of national energy generation in 18 hours. This like a whole state fleet of coal plants failing at once. (6)
The Robbins Island Mega Wind Factory in a remote island off Tasmania will have to stop working for five months of the year so it doesn't hurt the Orange bellied parrot. This infrastructure that only works about 30% of the time anyhow, now will be reduced to something like 17%. (7)
Germany
Few countries have placed a bigger bet on renewables than Germany, which installed some 28,443 wind turbines, and at its peak in 2016, employed 160,000 people just in the wind industry. But the effect on the rest of the economy is devastating. (8)
The Energiewende Green program was estimated to have cost 520 billion euros plus and after 20 years of subsidies and effort, reduced fossil fuel use from 84% of primary energy all the way down to 78%.
The cost of expensive electricity vandalizes the rest of the economy. The Green policy gamble may change Germany forever. The former economic powerhouse of Europe is coming undone, losing iconic parts to US and Asia.
South Asia
Tamil Nadu, India's southernmost state, is regarded by some as the renewable energy capital of India. It's also getting to be known for expensive electricity. The new rate for those using 500 units bimonthly would be $20 against the old rate of $13. (9)
Denmark
Denmark has approved a new Marine Plan which will abolish the open door offshore wind auction scheme and terminate 24 of the 33 offshore wind projects proposed under the scheme. (10)
Texas
Texas problems with wind and solar generation has been growing for years. In 2022, wind farms generated 25% of the electricity used in ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas). Solar farms generated 5.65%. Ten years earlier, wind's market share was 12.25%. (11)
Last July, wind power in sweltering Texas was performing at just 8% of its capacity, and frequently much lower than that, as it turns out out, the wind doesn't blow when it's 100 degrees outside. This means that for wind and solar to displace 2,000 megawatts of gas or coal capacity, around 8,000 megawatts or even more are required. (12)
The problems of intermittency and unreliability, wind and solar generation is vastly more expensive than natural gas, coal, and nuclear generation, The cost in Texas of renewable subsidies and protecting the grid from renewables will exceed $2.7 billion (it was 2.04 billion in 2021).
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New York
The price of offshore wind is about to go up, and electricity users across the Empire State will be on the hook for it. Two firms developing offshore wind projects have gone to the state Public Service Commission asking for an increase in the price they'll receive per megawatt hour of electricity produced. (13)
Conservative activists, environmentalists and New Jersey fishermen have protested the construction of wind turbines off the East Coast, highlighting increasing whale deaths in the region that they say are tied to offshore renewable energy.
Since offshore wind operations began in 2016 there is a disturbing number of whales washing up dead along the Eastern shores, said Craig Rucker of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. "In addition, these wind farms could wreak havoc on fishermen and their industry by disrupting the ecosystem from which they derive their livelihood," he added. (14)
Rhode Island
In what could be a foreshadowing of future offshore wind pricing, Rhode Island's leading utility opted not to move forward with a project called Revolution Wind 2 because the cost of the electricity was deemed too high. (15)
Higher interest rates, increased costs of capital and supply chain expenses, as well as the uncertainty of federal tax credits, all likely contributed to the higher proposed contract costs. Those costs were ultimately deemed too expensive for customers to bear and did not align with existing offshore wind power purchase agreements.
Long Waits
Wind and solar power generators wait in years long bureaucratic lines to connect to the power grid, only to be faced with fees they can't afford, forcing them to scramble for more money or pull out of projects completely. (16)
This application process, called the interconnection queue, is delaying the distribution of clean power and hampering the US in reaching climate goals.
The interconnection queue backlog is a symptom of a larger climate problem for the United States: There are not enough transmission lines to support the transition from a fossil fuel based electric system to a decarbonized energy grid.
The entire electric grid in the US has installed capacity of 1,250 gigawatts. There are currently 2,020 gigawatts of capacity in the interconnection queue lines around the country. That includes 1,350 gigawatts of power capacity, mostly clean, looking to be constructed and connected to the grid. The rest, 670 gigawatts, is for storage. (16)
Massive Landfills Needed
Wind turbines are not only an eyesore, but they are dangerous to the environment. Imagine the worn out turbine blades and other equipment associated with turbines that will need to be disposed of. The landfills will need to be massive, not to mention what the lakes require for waste slurries. (17)
Where will we put turbines?
To reach net zero, the world may need as many as 200,000 offshore wind turbines generating 2000 gigawatts (GW) of energy. To put this in context, by the end of 2022, 63 GW of offshore wind capacity had been installed worldwide. Within the next 28 years, the offshore wind energy sector needs to expand so that it is capable of producing 32 times its current energy capacity. (18)
The area of ocean we'll need for offshore wind is around 500,000 sq km, which is roughly the size of France.
Another factoid: Bloomberg estimates that it would take a land area equal to four South Dakota's by 2050 to decarbonize with wind turbines. (19)
Costs
It's often reported that electricity produced from the wind or sun is many times cheaper than electricity from coal, natural gas or nuclear. Yet despite increases every year in the amount of electricity produced from wind and solar, electricity consumers paid 14.3 percent more for electricity in 2022 than in 2021.(20)
That's more than twice the rate of consumer prices for all items which rose 6.5 percent during the same time period.
We know from examples in Germany and California that additions of wind and solar power into the main grid inevitably increases the cost of power to consumers.
Climate-based focused policies have brought Germany the highest electricity prices in the world, and California's are the highest in the continental US, some 75% above the US average.
1. Jo Nova, "Turbinegeddon--Siemens loses 4.5 billion because collecting free energy is not cheap," joannenova.com.au, August 9, 2023
2. Matt Oliver and Szu Ping Chan, "Britain's offshore wind industry is running out of air," principia-scientific.org, July 4, 2023
3. Net Zero Watch, "As predicted, wind industry demands yet more subsidies," proncipia-scientific.org, July 11, 2023
4. P. Gosselin,, "Energy giant Vattenfall puts gigantic offshore wind project on ice, threatening UK climate targets," notrickszone.com, July 23, 2023
5. Joanne Nova, "Mystery: Australians invest billions in free wind and solar but prices rise another 20-30 percent," joannenova.com.au, March 16, 2023
6. Jo Nova, "Six gigawatts of total wind generation collapsed in 16 hours last week, and nobody cared," joannenova.com.au, May 8, 2023
7. Jo Nova, "Mega wind farm approved that can't operate half the year," joannenova.com.au, December 9, 2022
8. Jo Nova, "Germany is a lesson for the rest of the world," joannenova.com.au, July 18, 2023
9. Vijay Jayaraj, "Wind and solar playing spoilsport in South Asian energy haven," co2coalition.org, December 16, 2022
10. Adnan Durakovic, "Denmark closes 'open door' offshore wind scheme, 24 projects canceled, principia-scientific.org, June 23, 2023
11. Bill Peacock,, "Wind fails Texas again," masterresource.org, June 26, 2023
12. Jude Clemente, "Wind and solar aren't nearly enough: Why Biden is suddenly supporting fossil fuels," realclearenergy.org, May 8, 2023
13. James E. Hanley, "The rising cost of offshore wind," empirecenter.org, July 5 2023
14. Josh Christenson, "Fishermen, activists protest offshore wind farms near Montauk, cite recent whale deaths," nypost.com, July 24, 2023
15. Bruce Mohl, "Ominous offshore wind news from Rhode Island," commonwealthmagazine.org, July 20. 2023
16. Catherine Clifford, "Wind and solar power generators wait in years long lines to put clean electricity on the grid, then face huge interconnection fees they can't afford," cnbc.com, April 6, 2023
17. Milt Harris, "Wind turbines are blowing in a green disaster that is just the beginning," Canada Free Press, June 25, 2023
18. Hugo Putuhena et al., "Where will all the wind turbines go?", realclearscience.com, July 5, 2023
19. Andrew I. Fillat and Henry Miller, "Wake up America: our climate policies are a catastrophe in the making," washingtonexaminer.com,, August 16, 2023
20. "Renewables are, as predicted, making electricity more expensive," principia-scientific.org, March 14, 2023
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Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.