Wind Energy Woes

America’s first large scale offshore wind farm began sending power to the Northeast in early 2024, but a wave of wind farm project cancellations and rising costs have left many people with doubts about the industry’s future in the US. (1)

Several big hitters, including Orsted, Equinor, BP and Avangrid, have cancelled contracts or sought to renegotiate them in recent months. Pulling out meant the companies faced cancellation penalties ranging from $16 million to several hundred million dollars per project. It also resulted in Siemens Energy, the world’s largest maker of offshore wind turbines anticipating financial losses in 2024 of around $2.2 billion. (2)

New York cancelled power contracts for three offshore wind projects citing a turbine maker’s plan to scrap its biggest machines. The news is a heavy blow to the US offshore wind industry and a major setback for the climate ambitions of New York and President Biden. The three projects would have delivered 4 gigawatts of offshore wind energy to the state amounting to almost half of New York’s 2035 goal. (3)

New York’s offshore wind aspirations are among the most ambitious in the country and key to complying with the state’s climate law which mandates a carbon free grid by 2040. At present, the state is less than 2 percent of the way toward meeting its target. (2)

Claims which are already tenuous due to rising wind and solar costs ignore virtually all of the hidden real world costs associated with building and operating wind turbines and solar panels while also keeping the grid reliable. John Hinderbacker provides the following table. (4)

Brett Christopher says, “Unless governments are willing to either assume the burden of renewables development through public ownership they will have to keep subsidies and tax credits in place indefinitely or else renewable investment will collapse because of the unfavorable economics.” He argues there is no economy wide business case for wind and solar without government support. (5)

Routine power rationing and statewide blackouts are the natural consequence of attempting to run on sunshine and breezes. There is not a single example anywhere in the world of a country or state that runs exclusively on wind or solar. (6)

Robert Bryce reports, “Since 2015 the tax credits for alt-energy subsidies haven’t decreased at all. Instead, they increased by a factor of 21. Wind/solar/alt energy subsidies will cost federal taxpayer $425 billion between now and 2033. (7)

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report showing that installing more wind farms doesn’t necessarily mean generating more electricity. According to the report, the US tripled its wind energy capacity from 47 gigawatts in 2010 to 147.5 gigawatts at the end of 2023. While that may sound impressive, generation for all those wind farms dropped 2.1% over 2022 (8)

Much of that drop was during the first six months of 2023 when wind generation fell by 14% compared to the same period in 2022.

The capacity factor for the nation’s wind energy fleet, the EIA explained in its report dropped to an eight year low of 33.5%, This is the ratio of the amount of power produced compared to the total it could have produced if it ran continuously.

Renewable energy has an intermittency problem which is why even though it’s cheap while producing electricity, it’s more expensive than any other form of energy due to all the costs associated with making it reliable.

Also, as the drop in wind generation in 2023 shows, even with wind farms spread out across the US, it’s still possible that the wind won’t be there to turn the turbines. These wind lulls are called wind droughts. Wind droughts can happen at any time and are fairly common. As regions of the country become more reliant upon wind turbines producing electricity during periods of high demand, they become more prone to electricity shortages during these wind droughts. (8)

Four months into 2024, the inflation, higher borrowing costs, logistical problems and supply chain woes that battered the industry in 2023 have not relented, forcing developers to cancel or seek to renegotiate deals as they did in 2023.

Even despite all of the subsidies offshore has received it still has failed to become a significantly mainstream source of energy.

Since the start of 2023, approximately 60% of all contracts signed by American offshore wind developers have become cancelled. Similar developments have played out in the start of 2024. (9)

Wind Compared to Nuclear

General Electric wind machines will soon fill 1600 square miles of New Mexico, but an Arizona nuclear station on just 6.4 square miles already generates 4 times the expected carbon free electricity.

This is the largest renewables project in the Western Hemisphere, spread over one million acres or roughly 1,600 square miles. (10)

For comparison, here is a description of the Palo Verde Nuclear Station: From a mere 6.4 square mile plot of land 60 miles from downtown Phoenix, Palo Verde annually produces more than 31 terawatt hours of zero carbon electricity. GE is boasting that it needs 244 times more land than Palo Verde to produce just 25 percent of the carbon free electricity. The nuclear facility opened more than 30 years ago and is still nearly 1,000 times more efficient with land use than GE’s latest and greatest machines and fines will be

United Kingdom

By December 2019 British power outfits had already collected over 650,000,000 pounds in ‘constant payments’ for doing nothing at all. The cost to power consumers was almost 1 billion pounds over the last five years and that figure is expected to soar. (11)

By 2030, wind power outfits across the UK (principally in Scotland) are predicted to pocket 3 billion pounds a year for simply doing nothing. The ‘constant payment’ is government mandated means by which taxpayers and/or power consumers are forced to literally pay wind power outfits to not produce electricity.

Australia

Wind energy failed recently in Australia at what must be close to a record low, with barely 88MW of production from 11,500MW of wind turbines. That’s about 0.7% of total nameplate capacity. (12)

There is no saving the Australian wind industry from a high pressure cell. Right now 19 out of 20 wind turbines are essentially towers of fiberglass waste. (13)

Joanne Nova says, “Australia has world-class high pressure cells that stop wind generation across the nation simultaneously. On days like these, it doesn’t matter much whether we have 1,000 wind turbines or 10,000 if 95% of them are failing.”

Even despite all of the subsidies offshore has received it still has failed to become a significantly mainstream source of energy.

Since the start of 2023, approximately 60% of all contracts signed by American offshore wind developers have become cancelled. Similar developments have played out in the start of 2024.

Despite spending 1.8 trillion on clean energy last year, the world is still 81% fossil fueled—burning more than ever (14)

References

1. Christopher Niezrecki, “Why America’s offshore wind power industry is struggling,” flaglerlive,com, May 22, 2024\
2. Maria Gallucci, “ Three NY offshore wind projects unravel after GE scraps turbine plans,” media.com, April 22,2024
3. Benja Storrow, “3 offshore wind projects nixed in New York.” Eenews.net, April 19, 2024
4. John Hinderbacker, “The true cost of wind and solar,” powerlineblog.com, April 3, 2024
5. Isaac Orr, “Bloomberg: wind and solar will need subsidies indefinitely,” americanexperiment.org, March 25, 2024
6. Michael Darby, “Reliance on wind and solar energy means frequent blackouts,” principia-scientific.org, March 7, 2024
7. Robert Bryce, “Wind/solar/alt energy subsidies to cost federal taxpayers $435 billion between now and 2033,” robertbrycesubstack,com, April 4, 2024
8. Kevin Killough, “Wind and solar intermittency may be worse than originally thought reports show,” principia-scientific.org,May 7, 2024
9. Nick Pope “Biden forges ahead with offshore wind fetish despite numerous costly setbacks,” principia-scientific.org, May 1, 2024
10. Ken Braun, “The biggest wind energy project on this side of the Earth and its tiny output,” webickerforfood.substack.com, April 6, 2024
11. “UK wind industry gets 1 billion pounds for producing no electricity,” principia-scientific.org, March 28, 2024
12. Jo Nova, “On a bad day $20 billion in wind power across Australia can only guarantee as much power as two diesel generators,” joannenova.com.au, June 15, 2024
13. Jo Nova, “We have world class windless weather. Today 95% of wind turbines on the continent of Australia are failing,” joannenova.com.au, May 28, 2024
14. “Global fossil fuel use hits a new record level in 2023,” joannenova.com.au, June 21, 2024