Terrific post from David Blackmon – I can’t cross post, so here it is verbatim! “Biden's Offshore Wind Boondoggle is Collapsing”

Here is a link to David’s article:

Biden's Offshore Wind Boondoggle is Collapsing (substack.com)

And here it is for those who don’t want to click it!

The Wall Street Journal published a long analysis of the trials and tribulations of Joe Biden’s heavily subsidized offshore wind boondoggle on Friday. The writers do a good job of detailing many of the major challenges wind developers off the northeastern coast have faced in executing their plans, though the writers carefully avoid mention of all the dead whales washing up onshore adjacent to the developments, and the extremely damaging impacts the projects are having on the commercial fishing industry.

The industry is collapsing into the Atlantic, though, and the piece attributes most of the trouble to timing, attributing the financial struggles of developers to inflation and supply chain muckups coming out of the world’s insane response to the Covid pandemic.

But one passage tells the real story, which is that developers who negotiated deals with states and utilities that enable them to pass on all cost increases to ratepayers are managing to keep their projects on track towards completion.

Oh, you don’t say.

Here is that passage from the story:

Analysts say the projects have suffered more than most because of the bad timing of power-purchase agreements just before inflation and supply-chain chaos struck. Those contracts, approved by regulators, exposed developers to the risk of cost overruns.

That isn’t the case in Virginia, where plans for Dominion Energy’s decrease; huge wind farm have stayed on time and on budget. Executives chalk up the progress in part to a model that lets it recover costs from ratepayers—which gave the company the flexibility to make investments before U.S. supply chains faltered.

[End]

So, you see that so long as the developer is able to just keep hitting ratepayers with all the cost overruns, politicians and utility executives eager to signal their virtues about cutting emissions can have their offshore wind cake and eat it, too.

But even with that, though, the financial community has unease about the model:

Even so, Bank of America recently told clients it is cautious about Dominion and other utilities with offshore ambitions. Dominion said in November that it is seeking an investor in the nearly $10 billion development as part of a wider strategic review of its business.

“Our objective is to get a true equity partner with pro rata sharing of project costs,” Dominion Chief Executive Robert Blue said on a call with analysts. Dominion declined to comment further. 

[End]

Nowhere do the writers ask the salient question that screams to be asked: If offshore wind is the highest-cost form of generation on the grid (it is), one of the least reliable forms of generation known to mankind (it is), has a very clear history of failing miserably to deliver when it is most needed (it does), and has a demonstrated horrific negative impact on the environment and endangered marine mammals (a given), then why are the federal and state governments forcing customers to suffer spiraling utility bills to subsidize these monstrosities into reality?

It’s all a real mystery, isn’t it? Or is it, really?

That is all.

Onwards!

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