Free Republic

For all the fretting, teeth gnashing, and howling at the moon here over the disruption in the Green Grift that is the wind industry and offshore wind particularly, nothing is quite as satisfying as watching the original practitioners of the fraud - the Europeans, fall on their dull, unrecyclable turbine blades.A couple of things have happened recently that signal tough times are ahead - a dunkelflaute or 'dark doldrums' - for the European wind industry and those governments that have gulped the green Kool-Ade to the very last drop in the pitcher, foisting the unreliable on their citizens even as...

President-elect Donald Trump caused quite a stir this week with his comments about the wind industry during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Trump compared wind farms to “dropping garbage in a field” and said wind developers are “getting rich” off of government subsidies that the projects receive. Trump also argued that wind energy is the most expensive form of energy, far more expensive than “clean natural gas.” Experts doing full analyses of all the costs associated with putting wind and solar farms on the grid tell Just the News that Trump is correct. Electricity ratesThe New York Times called the...

In 2018, the city council of Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia, had hoped to become the country’s first carbon-free city by 2030. About $415 million USD was invested in solar, wind and battery projects within 15 miles of the town of 19,000. These generators were supposed to supply enough electricity to power 117,000 homes. Then in October, a storm hit the region, destroying power lines connecting the town to dispatchable power from the New South Wales grid, and the entire town was plunged into rolling blackouts. While things gradually returned to normal over a few weeks, the region...

German coalition government may not survive the night.From trusted sources in Berlin.Fallout from election of Trump, who asking other things is Germany's most famous energy critic.Here is the chance needed to save Germany's nuclear plants.— Mark Nelson (@energybants) November 6, 2024THE WIND DIED ALONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT COALITIONAnd the cold weather came in just as it did. Part of the reason the government fractured? Ruinous green energy policies which exploded the price of electricity thanks to transitioning to unreliable renewables....The Greens are woke on steroids. Some years ago, their parliamentarians even floated the idea of legalizing pedophilia and incest. They...

Debris from a broken offshore wind turbine has for days been washing up on the Nantucket [MA] shore, prompting beach closures and frustrating locals at the peak of the summer season.

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...

The Government of Maine has really big plans for floating wind, a floating net zero fantasy, in fact. Since floating wind power is the next big green thing, it is worth taking a close look at this ruinous vision. Floating wind is a fad, not an established technology. It has yet to be built at utility scale or tested in a hurricane. The world’s biggest grid-connected system is a tiny 50 MW and just came online off Scotland. The cost of floating wind is necessarily much greater than fixed wind. A fixed wind tower sits on a simple monopile, while...

"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...

Wind power is essential to fighting climate change, yet building the turbines is energy-intensive and the blades are made from plastics. So how eco-friendly is wind power really?ind power is set to become the key pillar of the global renewable energy supply. Generating power from wind is not only carbon neutral, it can also be used to produce hydrogen and synthetic fuels like kerosene and diesel in a climate-friendly way. With the sun, wind is so abundant that it has the potential to supply the entire global energy demand a few times over. This will be vital for the energy...

As far as I’m concerned, this New Year is off to a resounding start, with the wind industry and Green cabal already taking a pounding right out of the proverbial gate. Yesterday’s late good news is so, SO schweet. Another huge blow for renewable energy to fight climate change: BP and Equinor have scrapped a massive offshore wind power project off New York's Long Island. Empire Wind 2 can't go forward b/c of cost increases. The whales win again!

More than 100 dolphins died in Brazil last week, and a local governor has declared a state of emergency as experts say additional deaths could be expected. The Brazilian Amazon continues to grapple with a severe drought. Experts say the most likely cause of the deaths in the lakes were high water temperatures, as temperatures have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit in the Tefe Lake region. The Mamiraua Institute, a research group of Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, said additional dolphins were found Monday. Local media has reported thousands of fish have also died at Tefe Lake, which is...

In a less than 24-hour span this weekend, two more dead whales have been discovered off the northern Atlantic coast of the U.S., and pro-cetacean activists are blaming Joe Biden’s offshore wind initiative. One whale washed up on Rockaway Beach in New York, while the other was filmed floating off of Chatham, Mass. While the connection between whale fatalities and offshore wind power development hasn’t been rigorously studied, some environmentalists believe that loud sonar mapping, high boat traffic, and other disturbances to whales’ natural habitat are contributing to the surge in deaths. ... New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) said...

A Danish offshore wind company with major projects in the U.S. has taken huge losses Wednesday after warning about its so-far unsuccessful effort to get more federal subsidies, according to Reuters. Orsted stated Tuesday that it anticipates that its three developments in U.S. waters may be $2.3 billion less valuable than anticipated, in part because the firm is having trouble receiving more tax credits from the Biden administration, according to Reuters. Other problems the firm’s projects face include supply chain backups and rising interest rates that make refinancing difficult. “The situation in U.S. offshore wind is severe,” Orsted’s CEO, Mads...

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

(Received via email from the Dept of Energy, U>S> Sect of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm)Three New Wind Energy Market Reports Highlight Growth in Wind Energy Deployment and Domestic Supply Chain, Creating Good-Paying Jobs Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America AgendaThree New Wind Energy Market Reports Highlight Growth in Wind Energy Deployment and Domestic Supply Chain, Creating Good-Paying Jobs Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America AgendaThe U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released three annual reports showing that wind power continues to be one of the fastest growing and lowest cost sources of electricity in America and is poised...

A cargo ship fitted with two massive sails developed by America’s Cup engineers is setting off on its maiden voyage from China to BrazilRemember in the olden days when ships weren’t fitted with engines and propellers to power them across the oceans? Back then, they used massive sheets of fabric called sails to capture the wind and use that to push them through the waves, novel idea right? Well now, that vintage tech is making a comeback on a cargo ship that’s about to sail from China to Brazil. According to the BBC, the 750-foot Pyxis Ocean cargo ship has...

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...

Can you spare a few thousand square feet of land for a windmill? Well, maybe not you, but surely a farmer can, right? Or a rancher? Or a developer. What’s a few thousand square feet to a land baron? Some people with lots of land can spare that much, especially if the government will pay them a few grand for it. Maybe not you or me, but… the other guy. Let HIM do it. America is a big country. Huge. It doesn’t really sound like a few thousand square feet of land for a windmill would have a big impact...

Wind turbines, once touted by the few wealthy and less populated countries as a clean solution for electricity, are now becoming an eyesore, a hazard, and a significant environmental threat. After decades of operating around the world for the few wealthy and less populated countries, wind turbines continue to have a live expectancy of about 20 years. To date there has yet to be discovered a financially viable means of recycling those wind turbines. As a result, today’s old wind turbines are being dumped into toxic waste dumps. Because wind turbine blades are very difficult to recycle, the waste stream...

Researchers from Ariel University have conducted a study of wind speed statistics in the Samaria region of Israel and have found that the area holds potential for wind energy production. The study analyzed 11 years of wind data provided by the Israeli Meteorological Service and found a cumulative mean wind speed of 4.53 m/s and a prevailing wind direction characterized by a cumulative mean azimuth of 226°. The study's co-author, Professor Asher Yahalom from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics at Ariel University explained that "we analyzed long-term wind data for the Samaria region and found that wind speeds...