Baker says Bay State needs to get wind right

June 11, 2019 • Massachusetts

Credit: By Colin A. Young | State House News Service | Jun 10, 2019

BOSTON – Currently poised to be the first state in the country to draw from utility-scale offshore wind power, Massachusetts has a responsibility to get it right and to position the offshore wind industry for long-term success dealing with climate change and delivering affordable power across the United States, Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday.

The state’s approach to secure clean power for itself and to blaze a trail for other states might make it “a little bit annoying to some people along the way,” but is designed to balance predictability for developers and the build-out of a sturdy local supply chain with increasingly urgent calls to deal with the impacts of a changing climate.

In a keynote address to the U.S. Offshore Wind Conference, meeting this week in at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, the governor said the two things he hears most often when talking to people interested in the offshore wind industry is that Massachusetts is moving too quickly and that Massachusetts is not moving quickly enough.

“That makes me think we’re probably in just about the right spot because people who think we’re not going fast enough have a completely unrealistic view about actually what’s possible and when, and the people who think we are going too fast I think don’t appreciate the fact that time is not necessarily our friend when it comes to these issues,” Baker said.

Massachusetts has either secured or is seeking a total of 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power and Baker’s administration announced May 31 that it will move ahead with additional procurements that would double the amount of possible offshore wind power in Massachusetts, enough to provide roughly a third of the state’s electricity demand.

The state and utility companies are expected to seek the additional 1,600 megawatts of energy generation in chunks of up to 800 megawatts, starting in 2022.

“We are going to be very focused on making sure that we get this right. We feel a certain responsibility, as the first player on the East Coast to really chase this in a big and serious way, that we need to get it right. For this industry to be the player that we would like to see it become as part of the constellation of energy producers and service providers, that we need it to become, we need to get it right,” Baker said. “And that’s probably going to make some of the people who think we’re not going fast enough completely crazy because we’re going to be very aggressive about ensuring that we do get it right.”

The governor added, “I want to make sure that what we do here in Massachusetts becomes a benchmark for how this industry can become a major player over the long term here in the United States. The best way to ensure that that happens is to ensure that we do the things the way they need to be done.”

Katie Theoharides, formerly the undersecretary for climate change who was sworn in as secretary of energy and environmental affairs last month, said Massachusetts can have its greatest impact on the energy future of the country by modeling a successful approach to offshore wind and encouraging others to adopt it.

“Massachusetts is only a really small percentage of U.S. or global emissions and so if we went to zero emissions overnight while other states and countries weren’t doing that, that wouldn’t be success,” she said. “What is success for us here in Massachusetts on climate change is really driving that transition and helping to model and helping to deploy these clean energy solutions; not just in Massachusetts but across the country and indeed across the globe. That’s really something we see as our imperative moving forward.”

Continue reading here:

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/06/11/baker-says-bay-state-nee...

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Comment by Willem Post on June 12, 2019 at 11:28am

So that will be 3200 MW of offshore.

Mass ratepayers can look forward to about 40 percent higher rates than they would have been without the offshore.

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

 

Theindirect 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. Where would the electricity come from during these hours?

 

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...

Comment by Dan McKay on June 11, 2019 at 6:23pm

A fool and his money is soon parted.

 

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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