Guest post by Willis Eschenbach (@weschenbach on eX-Twitter)
Back on March 29, 2021, the Biden White House took over pursue goals:
Hmmm, I say, that seems a bit ambitious. Current US grid-connected offshore wind is only 0.17 gigawatts… so we’d need to do ~175 times more than we’ve done so far, and do it in six short years.
So I broke it down. 65 months to 2030. Thirty gigawatts is thirty thousand megawatts, minus the 174 megawatts we have, which gives us a total of 29,826 megawatts of generating capacity.
29,826 megawatts divided by 65 months means we will have to add offshore wind capacity to Generating capacity increases by 465 megawatts per month. Monthly. Start now.
Let’s be realistic. That’s not possible. The largest offshore wind farm in the United States just went online, with a capacity of 132 gigawatts. To meet the White House’s goal, per month we need to build three new wind farms on such a scale. There is no way that could happen. Those are just numbers picked to win public support.
Next, I looked at the time it takes to get an offshore wind farm up and running. Here’s what ChatGPT says:
The time from when an offshore wind farm is proposed to grid connection is typically 7 to 10 years. This timeline can be broken down into several stages:
Pre-development and planning (1-2 years): This phase includes site identification, feasibility studies and initial environmental assessment.
Licensing and approval (3-5 years): Securing the necessary permits and approvals is often the most time-consuming part of the process. This includes detailed environmental impact assessments, stakeholder consultations, and obtaining state and federal permits.
Construction (2-3 years): Once all approvals are secured, construction of the wind farm, including installation of turbines and underground cables, will take place. This phase also includes the grid connection process.
Operation and testing (several months): After construction, the turbines are tested and the wind farm is gradually put into operation.
It seems absurd but it could be true. So that means unless a project is well underway right now, it won’t be online until after 2030.
Under the Biden Administration, there has been Nine offshore wind power projects have been approved.. These projects propose to build a total of 13 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity. However, only two of these projects are actually under construction or completed — Vineyard Wind, located off the coast of Massachusetts, and South Fork Windlocated near the coast of Rhode Island and New York.
South Fork Wind has just come online, which gives us a chance to look at some real cost figures. This is the largest wind farm to date, a 132 megawatt offshore wind power. The cost is $637 million.
(Note that to hit the 30 GW target, we need no less than 225 wind farms of this size… but I digress)
However, federal grants added $191 million to that, plus several hundred million more from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Stop and think. Some private company is building a six hundred million dollar white elephant in the middle of the ocean and is being paid four hundred million taxpayers’ money to do so.
So… what do New York consumers get from all this other than generous support?
Consumers receive wind power costs FOUR TIMES MORE like current electricity costs in New York.
Stop and think. Even if the developer gets two-thirds of the cost paid by taxpayers, offshore wind is still four times more expensive.
And of course, that doesn’t even factor in the cost of maintaining backup power for times when there’s no wind… comic artist Josh see that clearly
This is Learn more about the real cost of offshore wind power in New York.
What’s next?
Well, I’m sure the next thing the Harris/Walz campaign will say is that they are 100% in favor of expensive, unstable, and unreliable wind energy, and will say that if elected, they will do what they said they would do when Harris was last elected, which is to screw consumers and taxpayers with massive subsidies, tax breaks, and the cost of electricity from offshore wind.
Oh, right. They claim that 30 GW of offshore wind will “avoid 78 million tonnes of CO2 emissions”. Tens of millions of tonnes, sounds impressive, right?
But IF the IPCC is right, and that’s a big if, then this would reduce temperatures by 2050 by…
…
…wait and see…
…
… 0.0016°C. Approximately three-thousandths of a degree Fahrenheit.
Can we pass a law requiring proponents of any law or regulation in the name of “climate change” to tell us (and present their calculations) what the actual temperature difference will be by 2050?
Just ask anyone in New York, “Would you be willing to pay four times the price of conventional electricity for the rest of your life to MAYBE cool the globe three thousandths of a degree Fahrenheit in a quarter century?”
Dear all,
because
As usual: I request that when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. Avoid endless stupidity.
Mathematics. TRIGGER WARNING!! I said “show the math” right… but this is just arithmetic. Rest assured.
Anything after the hash mark “#” on a line is a comment. A line that starts with “>” is an instruction to the computer. A line that starts with “[1]” is the result of the calculation.
> (gtco2 = 78e6 * 20 / 1e9) # "gtco2" is total gigatonnes CO2 avoided, 2030-2050
[1] 1.56 # gigatons
> (deltappmv = gtco2 * 12 / 44 / 2.13) # convert GT C02 to GT carbon, then to ppmv (2.13 GTonnes C = 1 ppmv)
[1] 0.20#ppmv difference in 2050 due to wind farms
> (fullchange = (gettrend(co2ts) * 26 + 425)) # current atmospheric CO2 trend extended from 2024 to 2050
[1] 467.6 # ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere in 2050
> (theforce = log2((fullchange + deltappmv) / fullchange) * 3.7) # W/m2 forcing change due to 2050 CO2 difference
[1] 0.0023 #W/m2
> (tempchange = .7 * theforce) # temperature change from the CO2 forcing
[1] 0.0016 # °C
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