From Robert Bryce Substack
Robert Bryce
These 11 charts show how America’s largest NGO colludes with foreign companies looking to industrialize oceans with thousands of turbines that will hurt whales and taxpayers
Two of Europe's largest energy companies are abandoning the SS offshore wind project.
In May, UK-based oil and gas giant Shell (2023 revenue: $317 billion) announced that it would be laying off staff at its offshore wind business as, according to Bloomberg, it has decided to focus on “delivering power to our Bringing the most value to investors and customers. Bloomberg also reported that the layoffs follow the departure of senior executives from the company’s offshore wind and renewable energy businesses.
Last month, Murray Auchincloss, chief executive of oil and gas giant BP, imposed a “hiring freeze and paused new offshore wind projects.” According to Reuters, “the new CEO will put more emphasis on oil and gas as investors dissatisfy with its energy transition strategy” and that BP (2023 revenue: $208 billion) is cutting “big-budget, low-carbon projects, especially Yes, offshore wind is not expected to generate cash for several years.
The moves by BP and Shell are just the latest example of the troubles facing the offshore wind industry, which has been reeling from rising interest rates, citizen opposition and ballooning costs. Over the past year, many projects on the East Coast, including the Skipjack Wind Project in Maryland, the Park City Wind Project in Connecticut, and the South Coast Wind Project in Massachusetts, have been canceled due to poor economic conditions . All told, about 14,700 megawatts of offshore wind capacity has been canceled, according to data compiled by Ed O'Donnell, a nuclear engineer and principal of Whitestrand Consulting in New Jersey. By comparison, approximately 15,500 MW of generating capacity is currently under development, construction or operation.
Of course, these numbers don’t match the media hype surrounding offshore wind energy. But the stark reality is that the U.S. offshore wind industry is a subsidy-dependent industry dominated by foreign companies that work with some of the country’s largest climate NGOs, including NRDC (total revenue: $555 million) and the Sierra Club ( Total revenue: $555 million): $184 million).
These NGOs and others, including the National Wildlife Federation (total revenue: $142 million) and the Conservation Law Foundation (total revenue: $17.5 million), are leading one of the most shameful environmental betrayals in modern American history. Rather than seeking to protect marine mammals and prevent the industrialization of the ocean, they are eagerly pushing for the installation of hundreds of offshore wind platforms in the middle of the known habitat of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Last week, I gave public talks on the energy transition and offshore wind in Nantucket and Newport. These events gave me insight into the cesspool of offshore wind and the entities driving it. Two groups, ACK 4 Whales and Green Oceans, sponsored these lectures. (These groups are new and haven’t filed Form 990 yet.) These lectures introduced me to dozens of committed and interesting people from all walks of life, income levels, and political persuasions who are fighting the madness of offshore wind. Among them is Nantucket native Vallorie Oliver, president of ACK 4 Whales. Oliver's father worked as a carpenter and fisherman on the island. Since 2019, she has been fighting for offshore wind power projects.
Oliver reminded me of the dozens of other Americans I’ve had the pleasure of meeting over the past decade as I reported on the backlash against the encroachment of big wind and big solar. Last Monday, as we talked in her modest home on Nantucket, I told Oliver that she was special, but not unique. Oliver – and many others I meet who are struggling with the energy expansion that will inevitably come with alternative energy sources – share a common value. what is it? It’s a desire to protect their homes, communities, landscapes and property values from climate change scammers who are only interested in the profits they can make by paving vast tracts of land with solar panels and wind turbines.
In an email Sunday afternoon, Oliver told me what keeps her motivated: “When the last whale is killed, there's no chance of a do-over,” she explained. “There are fewer than 350 North Atlantic right whales left. When they kill the last whale, what will Gale say? 'I'm sorry'?”
These 11 charts show the offshore wind energy scandal is bigger than you think.
Figure 1: Approximately two-thirds of offshore projects in operation, under construction or proposed are wholly or partly owned by foreign companies.
Figure 2: Those foreign companies are enjoying subsidies. As the chart below shows, foreign companies pushing offshore wind in U.S. waters have received more than $9 billion in local, state and federal subsidies, loans or loan guarantees, according to Good Jobs First, and they're hungry for more. How profitable are offshore wind power subsidies? Take Vineyard Wind, for example, an 800-MW offshore project owned by Spanish company Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The construction cost of the project is approximately US$4 billion. With an investment tax credit of about 40 percent, the two foreign companies could receive up to $1.6 billion in federal tax credits for Vineyard Wind alone.
Figure 3: If there’s a better example of how climate NGOs sell out to big business and big oil, I can’t name it. This is a screenshot from the New York Offshore Wind Alliance website, showing the work of the NGO-Business-Industry-Climate Complex.
Figure 4: Yes.
Figure 5: Same as above.
Figure 6: I’m old enough to remember when environmental groups cared about whales. Alas, that was a long time ago. Sunday, daily mail Published an article about Apostolos Gerasoulis, professor emeritus of computer science at Rutgers University, who developed a software system to analyze dozens of whale incidents along the East Coast over the past few years fatalities. Gerasoulis set out to determine whether the whale deaths were related to huge blasts from sonar used by offshore wind-measuring ships. His conclusion: “Offshore winds kill whales…the numbers never lie. There's a reason for that. We've proven that the cause of whale deaths is offshore winds. Period. (H/t Substack writer David Blackmon.)
Figure 7: Could we trade the Sierra Club for an environmental organization that cares about protecting marine mammals? The following text is from the club's website.
Figure 8: This bureaucratic mumbo jumbo is buried in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s environmental impact report on Vineyard Wind. Here’s my plain English translation: “These projects won’t have any impact on climate change. But they are good because they allow state-level bureaucrats to say they achieved policy goals.
Figure 9: Large NGOs claim we must build gigawatts of offshore wind power because of climate change. But given the size of the U.S. power grid (1,300 gigawatts), the greenhouse gas emissions reductions achieved by offshore wind are equivalent to a fart in a hurricane.
Figure 10: Apart from investing money in boilers, offshore wind is the most expensive way to generate electricity. This is evidenced by the recent announcement that New York State will pay $155 per megawatt hour of electricity generated from the Empire Wind project.
Figure 11: States on the East Coast where offshore wind power is being built have the highest electricity prices in the country. These rates will be higher because of offshore wind. (California also plans to spend billions on offshore wind, but that’s a topic for another Substack.)
In closing, I'll repeat Edwards Deming's famous quote: “In God we trust, all others must provide data.” The data shows that offshore wind energy is a bad deal for whales and taxpayers.
