…and use the money for gas. There’s an elegant solution to end the eco-nonsense boondoggle known as “wind power”, and this seems to fit the bill:
The Trump administration is pulling nearly $1 billion out of offshore wind projects off the East Coast and forcing that money into U.S. oil, natural gas, and LNG production, replacing planned wind development with active oil and gas production.
TotalEnergies paid about $133 million for a lease in the Carolina Long Bay area and roughly $795 million for another in the New York Bight in 2022, locking nearly a billion dollars into projects that are now being shut down. The company is only reimbursed if it first invests that same money in domestic energy production, including LNG infrastructure, upstream oil, and natural gas development in the United States.
Sounds good. Now read what IntSec Burgum said, and it gets even better:
“Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers.”
Hell, that’s so searing a statement, I could have said it. Only with a lot more Bad Words and death threats.
Pour yourself a cuppa joe, settle back and read the whole article. If you’re not giggling like a little girl by the end of it, we can’t be friends.
As for the Greens, the reaction is typical:
More like the above, please.
They’re bragging that some wind farm project offshore is nearing completion or something. They’re bragging that they are defying Trump’s policies. They are such arrogant fools. Wind and solar are unreliable and inefficient sources of energy.
“Only with a lot more Bad Words and death threats.”
==========
LOL, I wanna party with this dood!
That’s pretty much my default setting any more.
Almost everything pisses me off.
When it comes to renewables, solar is far better than wind.
Wind turbines have dozens, if not hundreds, of moving parts that require periodic maintenance. Rotating parts wear out, and have to be replaced. And if you have ever seen a video of a wind turbine “running away” in a high wind-storm, it is spectacular. Not to mention wind turbines have a tendency to kill quite a few birds.
Solar PV has zero moving parts. Clean and inspect the panels, tighten any wiring connections, inspect the invertors & repair/replace as needed.
Compare solar insolation maps to wind resource maps.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/images/nrel-map-solar-annual-dni-2018.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Wind_Resource_of_the_United_States_showing_annual_average_wind_speed_at_100_meters_above_surface_level.jpg
While he’s at it, he needs to fast track approval for a few hundred nuclear power plants.
Cheapest and most reliable source of electricity with zero pollution.
As for the spent fuel rods?
Finland of all places came up with a fantastic solution.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/finlands-nuclear-waste-solution
It doesn’t have to be stored for all time, only until the science can catch up with a safe re-use.
But, the biggest stumbling block seems to be the over-abundance of “Harry Reid’s” in the human eco-system.
Fifty years ago Mobil ran a commercial on the network TV to sort of plead its side of the case and help them look like an ordinary corporation. In it, shot in black and white, a farmer and his son noticed that the classic mail-order windmill was starting to move in the faint wind. They rushed over to it and listened to a radio (in those days it was furniture, not portable even counting the electricity you needed). As the ball game began to play the wind died away and father and son looked disappointed.
I forget the last words of the announcer, but they had something to do with reliability of the energy source. I hope this return to sanity holds, at least until my Nieces and Nephew are better established.
Maybe this will even get into the bone- headed brains of the Enviro-wackos who think wind power can ever be a reliable energy source, but I doubt it.
“…steady power demand from industry and data centers, sectors that require a consistent supply rather than intermittent generation.”
Bingo. The econazis promote wind and solar as a panacea, a replacement for traditional generating sources, but wind and solar are only a supplement, a very expensive, intermittent and unreliable supplement, to the traditional means of making electric power.
Intermittent supplies like wind and solar will always need hydroelectric, fossil fuel and nuclear generating capacity sufficient to have 100% plus capacity for the power needs of a modern economy – industry, data centers and buildings in general – and that capacity must be online and ready to produce instantaneously, any time day or night, in any weather.
It reminds one (assuming it’s not been flushed down the Memory Hole) of TelePrompTer Jesus’ Solyndra fleecing, which was yet another example of Barry Soweto’s amazing ability to produce exactly no detectable result having extracted other peoples’ money for various purposes — Chicago Annenberg Project, anyone? Or all those “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects during his second term when the economy tanked and which produced not a single road, bridge or rail project? Or California’s high-speed rail money pit?
In fairness, solar and wind power DO work, but I’ve long held, ONLY in point-of-use generation regimes. Remote Australian cattle stations have run quite successfully on both for decades using those sources, largely from the necessity of doing so and owing to the lack of available public-utility options in those locations. Large-scale grid projects of either type can’t provide appreciable return without extremely heavy subsidies; simple transmission line loss constraints drain a major proportion of the generation capacity, maintenance and repair expenses almost always send them into the red, and they’re notoriously unreliable because, well, when the sun don’t shine or the wind don’t blow, you get nothing out of the exorbitant capital investment.
By their very nature they can’t be primary utility-scale generation sources and should never be relied upon for that purpose.