PPH - Trump’s hatred of wind turbines worries an otherwise booming industry
More shilling from the mainstream media for the insider's rigged game of wind power .
September 30, 2019
BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. — The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing U.S. energy sources.
Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the U.S. wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.
“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”
But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Trump hates wind turbines.....................................
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The Interior Department surprised and alarmed wind industry supporters in August, when the agency unexpectedly announced it was withholding approval for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, a $2.8 billion complex of 84 giant turbines. Slated for 15 miles off Martha’s Vineyard, Vineyard Wind has a brisk 2022 target for starting operations. Its Danish-Spanish partners already have contracts to supply Massachusetts electric utilities.
Investors backing more than a dozen other big wind farms are lined up to follow Vineyard Wind with offshore wind projects of their own. Shell’s renewable-energy offshoot is among the businesses ponying up for federal leases, at bids of more than $100 million, for offshore wind farm sites.
The Interior Department cited the surge in corporate interest for offshore wind projects in saying it wanted more study before moving forward. It directed Vineyard Wind to research the overall impact of the East Coast’s planned wind boom..................................................
...................................Along with the U.S. shale oil boom, the rise in wind and solar is helping cushion oil supply shocks like the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities.
Read the entire article at:
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/30/trumps-hatred-of-wind-turbin...
Why It’s So Hard to Build Offshore Wind Power in the U.S.
October 1, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com ~~
For years, the mighty wind blowing off the Massachusetts coast has beckoned developers with visions of clean, emission-free electricity. The latest to be seduced, Vineyard Wind LLC, aims to install 84 Statute of Liberty-size turbines about 15 miles off the state’s shoreline, which would together generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes as soon as 2022.
The project hit a snag in August, when the U.S. Department of the Interior ordered additional analysis of how the wind farm—and potentially 14 others that have been granted leases across almost 1.7 million acres of Atlantic waters—would affect the $1.4 billion fishing industry along the Eastern seaboard. U.S. regulators had sought to fast-track Vineyard Wind and could still sign off on the project by their self-imposed deadline in March, but the additional review is a blow to the companies behind Vineyard Wind, Avangrid Inc. and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which had hoped to begin construction this year.
The review also spooked the budding U.S. offshore wind industry, which has long struggled in the shadow of a previous high-profile failure, Cape Wind. That project was once the vanguard of American clean energy, but it collapsed in 2017, after a 16-year battle with the likes of the Kennedy family and billionaire industrialist Bill Koch over its location in the Nantucket Sound, just 5 miles from shore. Since then the opposition has only gotten more sophisticated, as would-be wind power developers must now debate with everyone from fishermen to the military over use of coastal waters. “There are a lot of battles that have to be fought to bring a project online, and a loss of a single battle can be the end of it,” says Timothy Fox, a vice president with the Washington research firm ClearView Energy Partners. “You have to win all of them.”
While the U.S. is second only to China in onshore wind power capacity—which is neither as reliable nor as efficient as offshore, but a lot cheaper to build—it lags behind China, Germany, the U.K., and other countries in taking advantage of the stronger, steadier gusts at sea. Despite the federal push to get projects off the ground, so far there’s just one offshore wind farm in the U.S.: a small, 30-megawatt facility in state waters near Block Island, R.I., that went online in 2016.
What Europe lacks in real estate, it made up for decades ago by setting ambitious clean-energy goals and subsidizing the large offshore installations that would be necessary to satisfy them. “The European governments footed the bill for the expensive projects early on, and now prices have come down so quickly, it’s opened the doors to new markets,” says Tom Harries, a senior associate with BloombergNEF. Offshore wind is still more expensive than its onshore competition, but prices are plunging globally. Rates for unsubsidized offshore wind power fell 64% from 2012 to 2018, reaching a global average of $89 per megawatt hour, according to BloombergNEF. Vineyard Wind won a contract to sell power to three Massachusetts utilities for $65 per MWh, which is still more costly than the average wholesale power price of $44 per MWh in New England last year. But offshore wind can also be a buffer against winter energy price spikes, as wind speeds tend to be higher during the colder months.
Enthusiasm for offshore wind development in the U.S. has surged in the Northeast alongside concern about climate change. States with dense cities and big energy demands now jockey to make ever-larger commitments to purchase offshore wind power from coastal projects that are still in the planning stages—a clamor that was absent when Cape Wind developers sought leases from the federal government in 2001. The Interior Department is reviewing construction plans for 5 of the 15 offshore wind leases it’s already sold, while also working to auction more leases near New York and California.
Continue reading here:
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/10/01/why-its-so-hard-to-build...
Connecticut offshore wind competition kicks off
By Benjamin Kail, Day staff writer | The Day | September 30. 2019 | www.theday.com ~~
Hartford – Multiple renewable energy ventures recently entered the competition to provide Connecticut electricity from offshore wind farms.
So far, Connecticut’s first selected offshore wind suppliers, Ørsted and Eversource, will compete with Mayflower Wind, a joint venture between Shell New Energies and EDPR Renewables North America, and Vineyard Wind, a pairing of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables.
The auction, following the state’s request for proposals in August, stemmed from lawmakers’ and Gov. Ned Lamont’s push for an injection of up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2030. The competition comes as states along the East Coast are ramping up commitments to offshore wind and renewable energy while targeting significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Ørsted and Eversource, already slated to provide Connecticut and Rhode Island a combined 700 megawatts from the Revolution Wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard, announced in a news release Tuesday that they had submitted to state regulators several proposals as part of the Constitution Wind project.
Ørsted and Eversource said the project would be located 65 miles off the coast of New London and will have the capacity to power up to half a million homes. The project will benefit from more than two years of surveys, studies of wind speed data and ongoing work with stakeholders such as mariners and commercial fishermen, the companies said. The state of New York earlier this year tapped Ørsted and Eversource to deliver power to Long Island from a wind farm 30 miles east of Montauk Point.
“Since 2015, our team has been focused on bringing affordable, renewable energy to Connecticut, a major opportunity for the state’s clean energy future and economy,” Thomas Brostrømm, Ørsted President and CEO, said in a statement. “Following up on the selection of our Revolution Wind project by the state and our investment to turn New London State Pier into a world-class offshore wind center, our proposed Constitution Wind project will be delivered by the industry’s leading experts to ensure the project is achievable, sustainable and successful for Connecticut.”
Ørsted and Eversource remain in negotiations with the Connecticut Port Authority and the state to overhaul New London State Pier into a hub for upcoming wind projects along the East Coast. They have pledged to invest almost $60 million into pier upgrades, but some concerns have risen about transparency of the plans, port authority management and potentially displaced businesses.
Ørsted, a Danish-based offshore wind giant that has divested most of its previous oil and gas business, bought Block Island Wind Farm developer Deepwater Wind for $500 million last year. Ørsted also bought onshore wind and solar developer Lincoln Clean Energy for almost $600 million last year.
Continue reading here:
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/10/01/connecticut-offshore-win...
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Comment by Willem Post on October 1, 2019 at 11:14am
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Wind and Solar Subsidies Provide a Bonanza for Wall Street
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-more-wind-and-solar...
This URL shows wind and solar prices per kWh would be at least 50% higher without direct and indirect subsidies. They would be even higher, if the costs of other items were properly allocated to the owners of wind and solar projects, instead of shifted elsewhere. See below section High Levels of Wind and Solar Require Energy Storage.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/economics-of-tesla-powe...
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plant...
http://www.usu.edu/ipe/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/UnseenWindFull.pdf
This URL shows about 2/3 of the financial value of a wind project is due to direct and indirect subsidies, and the other 1/3 is due to electricity sales.
http://johnrsweet.com/Personal/Wind/PDF/Schleede-BigMoney-20050414.pdf
- Indirect subsidies are due to federal and state tax rebates due to loan interest deductions from taxable income, and federal and state MARCS depreciation deductions from taxable income.
- Direct subsidies are up-front federal and state cash grants, the partial waiving of state sales taxes, the partial waiving of local property, municipal and school taxes. See URLs.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
Any owner, foreign or domestic, of a wind and/or solar project, looking to shelter taxable income from their other US businesses, is allowed to depreciate in 6 years almost the entire cost of a wind and solar project under the IRS scheme called Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System, MARCS. The normal period for other forms of utility depreciation is about 20 years.
Then, with help of Wall Street financial wizardry from financial tax shelter advisers, such as BNEF*, JPMorgan, Lazard, etc., the owner sells the project to a new owner who is allowed to depreciate, according to MARCS, almost his entire cost all over again. Over the past 20 years, there now are many thousands of owners of RE projects who are cashing in on that bonanza.
Loss of Federal and State Tax Revenues: The loss of tax revenues to federal and state governments due to MARCS was estimated by the IRS at $266 billion for the 5y period of 2017 - 2021, or about $53.2 billion/y.
The IRS is required to annually provide a 5y-running estimate to Congress, by law.
The next report would be for the 2018 - 2022 period
The indirect largesse of about $53.2 billion/y, mostly for wind and solar plants^ that produce expensive, variable/intermittent electricity, does not show up in electric rates. It likely is added to federal and state debts.
Most of the direct federal subsidies to all energy projects of about $25 billion/y also do not show up in electric rates. They likely were also added to the federal debt.
Most of the direct state subsidies to RE projects likely were added to state debts.
The additional costs of state-mandated RPS requirements likely were added to the utility rate base for electric rates.
* BNEF is Bloomberg New Energy Finance, owned by the pro-RE former Mayor Bloomberg of New York, which provides financial services to the wealthy of the world, including providing them with tax avoidance schemes.
^ In New England, wind is near zero for about 30% of the hours of the year, and solar is minimal or zero for about 70% of the hours of the year. Often these hours coincide for multi-day periods, which happen at random throughout the year, per ISO-NE real-time, minute-by-minute generation data posted on its website. Where would the electricity come from during these hours; $multi-billion battery storage, insufficient capacity hydro storage?
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68227.pdf
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tax-equity-investors-b...
Warren Buffett Quote: "I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate," Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/e...
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" Its Danish-Spanish partners already have contracts to supply Massachusetts electric utilities."
THEY WILL BE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK WHILE THEY SHACKLE NEW ENGLAND RATEPAYERS WITH EVEN HIGHER ELECTRIC RATES.
THEY WILL BE MAKING NEW ENGLAND AND THE US EVEN LESS COMPETITIVE COMPARED WITH EUROPE AND JAPAN.
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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