Free Republic

It currently costs NY about $36 per MWH for energy. But the state demanded wind. Let’s discuss the amazing bottom line results. So Much for So Little The Wall Street Journal asks Why Is New York Paying So Much for Wind Power? New York state signed a contract in June to buy electricity generated by two large wind farms, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind, off the coast of Long Island. The projects are expected to begin in 2026 and 2027, with power delivered to Brooklyn (Empire) and Long Island (Sunrise). The state will pay $155 and $146 per megawatt-hour,...

The federal government has ordered the Vineyard Wind farm to shut down until further notice because of a turbine blade failure this weekend. Several beaches were closed on Tuesday while crews worked to clean up "large floating debris and fiberglass shards" from the broken wind turbine blade off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. A total of six south shore Nantucket beaches were closed to swimming due to debris that washed ashore. "You can walk on the beaches, however we strongly recommend you wear footwear due to sharp, fiberglass shards and debris on the beaches," the Nantucket Harbormaster said. Vineyard Wind...

Wind is quietly blowing away coal, when it comes to supplying electricity in the US.In April, wind power generated more electricity than coal for the second month in a row, according to the latest available data from the Energy Information Administration. Wind briefly surpassed coal once before in April last year, but this time it’s by a much larger margin and for two consecutive months. Renewable energy production has been ticking up for years but only recently have fuels like wind and solar approached the ballpark of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Last year renewables made up 21% of electricity...

Aslow-motion collapse in the offshore wind industry continues to grow as sticky inflation and supply chain challenges force developers to delay or cancel major projects. In particular, progress towards the Biden administration’s goal of building large amounts of floating wind off the northeastern US coast is just about stalled. Shell, which invested in a series of offshore wind projects in recent years, including offshore the northeastern United States, announced last week it would lay off much of its offshore wind business staff as the oil giant advances its program of refocusing on its core oil and gas business. “We are...

"Wind Droughts": A 15-state region produced less than 10% of its potential 22 gigawatt wind output over an 82-hour period. For 42 hours straight within that period, the wind output was only 1.5% of the total.. Last month, multiple news outlets reported on the record-smashing year the wind industry had in 2023. The Global Wind Energy Council released its latest report showing the world installed 117 gigawatts of capacity. The Associated Press called 2023 a “record year for wind installations,” and Reuters noted that the U.S. was among the top five markets for wind installations. The U.S. Energy Information Administration...

Why Are Some Wind Turbines Not Turning? SNIP 2. The Wind Is Too Strong Wind turbines need wind to function, yet too much wind is ineffective. Wind turbines can only be safely operated up to a particular wind speed, known as the “cut-off wind speed” or “cut-out wind speed.” Any wind exceeding the limit is too powerful for the mechanism to manage, posing threats to the equipment and the workers.

Woof, the news just keeps getting grimmer and grimmer for Danish offshore energy behemoth Ørsted...and it's great.Thanks to a heads-up this morning from HotAir regular John Clark, I have had an encouraging time digging into what's looking damn near like a collapse of one of the biggest names in the wind farm business. It bodes some serious ill for the entire sector.You all know from reading my posts that Ørsted has had a miserable twelve months, thanks to a number of circumstances. Most of them stem from contracts agreed to based on overconfidence in continued government largesse, cheap financing, low...

Due to the Biden administration's decision to waive financial assurance fees, should Vineyard Wind fail and not fully fund their decommissioning account in a timely manner, the public will likely have to pick up the tab.. Biden administration reportedly waived fees for an offshore wind project that are in place to ensure that the infrastructure is removed and the site reclaimed at the end of the project’s life.. Joe Biden, as part of his climate agenda, is pushing an aggressive buildout of offshore wind projects along the East Coast. With the offshore wind industry struggling financially, the waiving of these...

It’s about time Californians of all ideological persuasions wake up and stop what is possibly the most economically wasteful and environmentally destructive project in American history: the utility scale adoption of offshore wind energy. The California Legislature intends to despoil our coastline and coastal waters with floating wind turbines, 20+ miles offshore, tethered to the sea floor 4,000 feet beneath the waves. Along with tethering cables, high voltage wires will descend from each of these noisy, 1,000 foot tall leviathans, but we’re to assume none of this will disrupt the migrations of our treasured Cetaceans and other marine and avian...

Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.

Earlier this week Texas grid operator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked residents to reduce energy usage amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid rolling blackouts. ERCOT manages electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers and represents 90% of the state’s electric load, according to the company. Temperatures soared to 115+ degrees with the heat index in parts of Texas on Thursday amid an excessive heat warning. ERCOT issued the voluntary conservation notice due to extreme temperatures, forecasted high demand and lower reserves due to low wind generation. ... The wind turbines aren’t producing enough energy. Texas...

It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes.“Wind power fails on every count,” he says, adding that governments are ignoring “overwhelming evidence” of the inadequacies of wind power, “and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis”.Professor Allison’s dire warnings are contained...

Bloomberg Business Week, no foe of green energy, headlines: Wind Turbines Taller Than the Statue of Liberty Are Falling Over.” The article beneath the headline reports on a variety of alarming disasters involving wind turbines, including collapses of very tall sructures.On a calm, sunny day last June, Mike Willey was feeding his cattle when he got a call from the local sheriff’s dispatcher. A motorist had reported that one of the huge turbines at a nearby wind farm had collapsed in dramatic fashion. Willey, chief of the volunteer fire department in Ames, 90 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, set out...

It turns out that efforts to recycle plastic are a waste of time and energy. The environmental advocacy group Greenpeace issued a report showing that "mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste has largely failed and will always fail because plastic waste is: (1) extremely difficult to collect, (2) virtually impossible to sort for recycling, (3) environmentally harmful to reprocess, (4) often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and (5) not economical to recycle." Lisa Ramsden, a senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace USA and one of the authors of the report, said "most plastic is not being recycled in...

As the imposition of a tax on the use of fossil fuels is debated in Pennsylvania and Virginia, along comes an analysis showing the failure of such efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in the name of saving the planet. Under a multi-state compact known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Virginia already taxes producers of electricity on the basis of how much carbon dioxide they emit in burning fossil fuels — mainly coal and natural gas. Efforts to have the state withdraw from RGGI appear to have stalled. Pennsylvania officially entered RGGI July 1 and would begin...

Last week the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that they had sentenced ESI Energy for a “blatant disregard” of federal wildlife laws of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). In their guilty plea to multiple violations, ESI admitted to the killing of at least 150 bald and golden eagles across 50 of its wind-energy facilities since 2012. Nearly all died of blunt force trauma attributable to being struck by a wind-turbine blade. The so-called “clean” energy company — a subsidiary of NextEra Energy — was fined $8 million, or about $53,300 per carcass. It turns out that the fine...

Some turbines killed multiple eagles and because the carcasses are not always found, officials said the number killed was likely higher than the 150 birds cited in court documents. Wind energy company pleads guilty after at least 150 eagles killed in U.S. Some turbines killed multiple eagles and because the carcasses are not always found, officials said the number killed was likely higher than the 150 birds cited in court documents. NextEra Energy was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade....

A U.S. wind power developer pleaded guilty to multiple violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act after its wind turbine blades allegedly killed more than 135 bald and golden eagles across the country. The company, ESI Energy, pleaded guilty Tuesday to three counts of violations in the form of golden eagle deaths. Prosecutors said the birds were documented to have been killed by blunt force trauma after being struck by its wind turbine blades at its facilities in Wyoming or New Mexico, where ESI had not applied for the necessary permits. As part of the settlement, ESI “acknowledged that at...

Among Governor Glenn Youngkin’s first actions was Executive Order #9 initiating Virginia’s withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Northeastern U.S. “carbon market” that sets and enforces emission limits for coal and gas power plants. RGGI also lets utilities buy “carbon credits” when emissions exceed those limits, passing costs on to families, businesses, hospitals and schools. Special interests will contest withdrawal, but the EO sets the proper tone for reforming Virginia’s energy system. Meanwhile, though, the 2020 “Virginia Clean Economy Act” still requires that utility companies close all fossil fuel generating plants – and replace them with wind and...

The government and big financial institutions promote a fraudulent analysis of the cost of solar and wind electricity. Their narrative is that wind and solar are competitive with traditional fossil fuels and that the cost of wind and solar is rapidly dropping. Academics and the media amplify and spread the fraudulent analysis. The basis of the fraud is a simple comparison of the cost per kilowatt hour at the plant fence for electricity produced by wind or solar versus electricity produced by a traditional plant. Some or all of the massive subsidies for wind and solar are ignored in such...