These 11 charts show America’s biggest NGOs are colluding with foreign corporations that want to industrialize our oceans with thousands of turbines that will harm whales and taxpayers
Europe’s two largest energy companies are abandoning the SS Offshore Wind project.
In May, Shell, the UK-based oil and gas giant (2023 Revenue: $317 Billion), has announced that it will cut staff from its offshore wind business because, According to BloombergThe company has decided to focus on markets that “deliver the most value to our 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, CEO of oil giant BP, imposed a “hiring freeze and a pause on new offshore wind projects”. According to ReutersThe new CEO is “focusing more on oil and gas amid investor discontent over the company’s energy transition strategy” and BP (2023 Revenue: $208 Billion) has cut investment in “large, low-carbon projects, particularly offshore wind, which are not expected to generate cash for many years”.
The moves by BP and Shell are just the latest examples of the troubles facing the offshore wind industry, which is reeling from high interest rates, public opposition and soaring costs. Over the past year, several East Coast projects, including Skipjack Wind in Maryland, Park City Wind in Connecticut and South Coast Wind in Massachusetts have been canceled due to the poor economic conditions. Overall, according to data compiled by Ed O’Donnell, a nuclear engineer and principal in New Jersey Whitestrand ConsultingAbout 14,700 megawatts of offshore wind capacity have been canceled. By comparison, about 15,500 megawatts of capacity is currently under development, construction, or operation.
Of course, those numbers don’t match the tsunami of hype about offshore wind that has been unleashed in major media. But the harsh reality is that the U.S. offshore wind industry is a subsidy-driven industry dominated by foreign companies that are working with some of America’s largest climate NGOs, including NRDC (total revenue: $555 million) and the Sierra Club (total revenue: $184 million).
Those NGOs and others, including the National Wildlife Federation (gross revenue: $142 million) and the Conservation Law Foundation (gross revenue: $17.5 million), are leading the most shameful environmental betrayal in modern American history. Instead of seeking to protect marine mammals and halt the industrialization of our oceans, they are eagerly promoting the installation of hundreds of offshore wind rigs right in the middle of known habitat for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Last week, I gave public lectures in Nantucket and Newport on the energy transition and offshore wind. Those events allowed me to delve into the quagmire of offshore wind and the entities driving it. Two small groups, ACK 4 Whale And Blue oceansponsored the lectures. (The groups are so new that they haven’t filed Form 990s yet.) The lectures allowed me to meet dozens of dedicated and interesting people from all walks of life, income levels, and political persuasions who are fighting the madness of offshore wind. Among them was Nantucket native Vallorie Oliver, who is now president of ACK 4 Whales. Oliver’s father was a carpenter and fisherman on the island. She has been fighting offshore wind projects since 2019.
Oliver reminded me of dozens of other Americans I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the past decade as I’ve covered the backlash against the encroachment of Big Wind and Big Solar. When we spoke at her modest home on Nantucket last Monday, I told Oliver that she is special but not unique. Oliver—and many others I’ve met who are struggling with the rampant energy development that inevitably comes with alternative energy—all share a common value. What is it? A desire to protect their homes, their neighborhoods, their views, and their property values from climate change speculators interested only in the profits they can make by paving vast swaths of land with solar panels and wind turbines.
In an email on Sunday afternoon, Oliver told me what motivated her: “There’s no chance of a do-over when the last whale is killed,” she explained. “There are fewer than 350 North Atlantic right whales left. What will Big Wind say when they kill the last whale? ‘Sorry’?”
These 11 charts show the offshore wind scandal is even worse 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.
Chart 2: Foreign companies benefit from subsidies. As shown below, foreign companies promoting offshore wind in US waters have, according to data from Good Jobs Firsthas collected more than $9 billion in local, state, and federal subsidies, loans, or loan guarantees, and they’re looking for more. How profitable are offshore wind subsidies? Consider Vineyard Wind, an 800-megawatt offshore project owned by Spanish company Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The project will cost about $4 billion to build. With an investment tax credit of about 40 percent, these two offshore companies could collect as much as $1.6 billion in federal tax credits for Vineyard Wind alone.
Chart 3: If there’s a better example of how climate NGOs have sold out to big business — and Big Oil — I can’t name it. Here’s a screenshot from New York Offshore Wind Alliance website display NGO-business-industry-climate consortium Working.
Chart 4: Yes.
Chart 5: Ibid.
Chart 6: I’m old enough to remember when environmental groups were concerned about whales. Alas, that was a long time ago. On Sunday, Daily mail published an article about Apostolos Gerasoulisa professor emeritus of computer science at Rutgers who built a software system to analyze dozens of whale deaths that have occurred off the East Coast over the past few years. Gerasoulis set out to determine whether the whale deaths were related to the loud sonar blasts used by offshore wind survey ships. His conclusion: “Offshore wind kills whales… The numbers never lie. There is a cause. We have shown that the cause of whale deaths is offshore wind. Period.” (H/t Substack fellow writer David Blackmon.)
Figure 7: Could we trade the Sierra Club for an environmental group concerned with protecting marine mammals? The text below is from the club website.
Figure 8: This bit of red tape is buried in the environmental impact report that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management did for Vineyard Wind. Here’s my plain English translation: “These projects won’t make a difference on climate change. But they’re good because they allow state officials to say they’ve achieved their policy goals.”
Figure 9: Major NGOs claim we must build gigawatts of offshore wind because of climate change. But given the sheer size of the US grid (1,300 gigawatts), any greenhouse gas reductions that could be achieved with offshore wind would be the equivalent of a fart in a hurricane.
Figure 10: Barring throwing money at boilers, offshore wind is the most expensive way to generate electricity. The recent announcement that New York state will pay $155 per megawatt-hour of electricity from the Empire Wind project prove that point.
Figure 11: East Coast states building offshore wind have some of the highest electricity prices in the country. Those prices will rise even higher with offshore wind. (California also is planning to spend billions of dollars on offshore wind power.but that’s a topic for another Substack.)
I would like to end by recalling the famous quote by W. Edwards Deming: “We believe in God, all others must carry the data.” Data shows offshore wind is a bad deal for both whales and taxpayers.
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