Free Republic

"Wind Droughts": A 15-state region produced less than 10% of its potential 22 gigawatt wind output over an 82-hour period. For 42 hours straight within that period, the wind output was only 1.5% of the total.. Last month, multiple news outlets reported on the record-smashing year the wind industry had in 2023. The Global Wind Energy Council released its latest report showing the world installed 117 gigawatts of capacity. The Associated Press called 2023 a “record year for wind installations,” and Reuters noted that the U.S. was among the top five markets for wind installations. The U.S. Energy Information Administration...

In November, Orsted nixed two major wind farm projects planned off the coast of New Jersey, citing the same problems that the company cited for the Skipjack Wind project.. Danish wind developer Orsted has canceled another contract on a planned offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean. The company said the 966-megawatt Skipjack Wind project, planned to be constructed off the coasts of Delaware and Maryland, would no longer be commercially viable at the contract prices due to inflation, high interest rates and supply chain issues. “Today’s announcement affirms our commitment to developing value creating projects and represents an opportunity...

As far as I’m concerned, this New Year is off to a resounding start, with the wind industry and Green cabal already taking a pounding right out of the proverbial gate. Yesterday’s late good news is so, SO schweet. Another huge blow for renewable energy to fight climate change: BP and Equinor have scrapped a massive offshore wind power project off New York's Long Island. Empire Wind 2 can't go forward b/c of cost increases. The whales win again!

The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history. As reported by Curtis Killman in the Tulsa World on Thursday, the ruling grants the United States, the Osage Nation, and Osage Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief via “ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass.” The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer...

BOSTON – October 31, 2023 – Following a decision by its Board of Directors, Ørsted will cease development of the Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 projects and has taken final investment decision (FID) on the Revolution Wind project. “Macroeconomic factors have changed dramatically over a short period of time, with high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain bottlenecks impacting our long-term capital investments,” said David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Ørsted. “As a result, we have no choice but to cease development of Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2. We are extremely disappointed to...

The tech billionaires behind a project to build a utopian new city in California's Bay Area have released the first artistic renderings of their ambitious plans. Previously known only as 'Flannery Associates,' the group rebranded as 'California Forever' and released the plans in a publicity blitz on Thursday night, following months of silence and speculation. Led by former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek, the group's backers include Silicon Valley heavyweights such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Andreessen Horowitz investor Marc Andreessen, and Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs. California Forever is now the largest landowner in Solano County, which is...

After weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates – backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors – has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Their goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy. The land bought by the firm encircles Travis air force base in Fairfield, a city of about 120,000 residents and home to the...

Government officials are investigating a mysterious company that has bought around 55,000 acres of dry farmland around a USAF base in California. Travis Air Force base, northeast of San Francisco, houses large transport aircraft used for refueling smaller planes and sending aid and munitions around the world. Starting in 2018, a company called Flannery Associates LLC has spent around $800million buying swathes of land around the base, leaving local, state and federal officials flummoxed as to who they are and what they want with it. An attorney representing Flannery told The Wall Street Journal the company is controlled by US...

Green advocates remain undaunted by the energy source’s surging costs and questionable efficiency... Like the proverbial skunk at a garden party, reality has disrupted the offshore-wind fantasy. After announcing a potential $2.3 billion write-down on its U.S. offshore-wind projects, Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper said that it was “inevitable” that consumers would need to pay more for renewable energy, since offshore wind “faces cost increases in orders of magnitude.” Nipper’s confession makes a jarring contrast with claims made about offshore wind’s costs only a few years ago. In 2017, Michael Liebrich told BloombergNEF that green-energy costs were at a “tipping point”...

On a chilly June day, with the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard just over the distant horizon, a low-riding, green-hulled vessel finished hammering a steel column nearly 100 feet into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. This was the beginning of construction of the first giant wind farm off the United States coast, a project with the scale to make a large contribution to the Northeast power grid. For some of those looking on from a nearby boat, the driving in of the first piling marked a milestone they had labored to reach for two decades. The $4 billion project,...

Scottish Power admitted 71 of its windmills were hooked up to the fossil fuel supply after a fault developed with their power supply. Dozens of giant turbines on Scotland’s windfarms have been powered by diesel generators, the Sunday Mail can reveal. Scottish Power admitted 71 of its windmills were hooked up to the fossil fuel supply after a fault developed on the grid. The firm said it was forced to act in order to keep the turbines warm during very cold weather in December. But a whistleblower has told the Sunday Mail the incident is among a number of environmental...

BILLINGS, Mont. — A wind energy company was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a Tuesday court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was charged in the deaths of eagles at three of its wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico. In addition to those deaths, golden and bald eagles were killed...

Conservative watchdog groups ran a guerrilla-style ad campaign on the New Jersey shore for Earth Day, drawing attention to a surge in whale deaths amid the growth of offshore wind farms. Beachgoers in Atlantic City on Saturday looked on as a single-propeller plane carried a a message waving from a banner — “SAVE-WHALES-STOP-WINDMILLS.ORG” — and drivers heading out of town saw a billboard with the same message and a picture of a dead whale washed ashore.

A Department of Defense assessment of locations proposed to build offshore wind farms on the Atlantic coast found several areas to be “highly problematic” due to their proximity to U.S. military training sites, Bloomberg reported on Monday, publishing a Pentagon map of the areas in question. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Fox News on the same day that the warnings published by Bloomberg were an authentic assessment of proposed areas for offshore wind development, stating that the Defense Department would “continue to work” with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), responsible for greenlighting the offshore wind deals, to find...

A reader named Bill Ponton has just produced an important new Report that explores the effects and costs of continuing increases in generation of electricity from wind. The Report has the title “The Cost of Increasing UK Wind Power Capacity: A Reality Check.” Ponton has sent his Report to me, and I’m writing about it now even though I don’t yet have a link to provide readers with access to the full Report. I will update this post with a link to the full Report as soon as I have it. Ponton’s Report follows and builds on prior work of...

It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes. “Wind power fails on every count,” he says, adding that governments are ignoring “overwhelming evidence” of the inadequacies of wind power, “and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis”. Professor Allison’s dire warnings...

SEA ISLE CITY, NJ — After a "mass stranding event" of beached dolphins in Sea Isle City on Tuesday afternoon, all eight have died, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. A pod of eight Common dolphins stranded on the beach, with two already dead as of shortly after 1 p.m., the Center announced on Facebook. "The remaining six dolphins were assessed by our veterinarian and their conditions were rapidly deteriorating," the Center wrote in an update at 3:20 p.m. The decision was made to humanely euthanize them, as returning them to the ocean would prolong their "inevitable death," they...

Humpback whale washes up on the Jersey shore. (Credit: NJ.com) Last month, RedState reported on the spate of dead whales washing up on beaches in New York and New Jersey. The pace has not slowed, and there now have been 25 reported deaths of the huge animals just since the beginning of December 2022.Many blame the construction of massive offshore wind turbines, but the federal government insists there’s no connection, with the Marine Mammal Commission, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the National Ocean Atmospheric Association (NOAA) rejecting the claims.1990 – liberals – "SAVE THE WHALES!"2023 –...

Norway's government on Thursday (Mar 2) apologised to indigenous Sami reindeer herders affected by wind farms that were declared illegal after they were built, following a week of protests by activists. The country's highest court unanimously ruled in October 2021 that the expropriation and operating permits issued for the construction of 151 turbines in the Fosen region of western Norway were invalid. The court found that the project violated the rights of Sami families to practise their culture of reindeer husbandry.

The speed by which wind farms are being constructed across the U.S. is going faster than a spring wind in Casper. In about 20 years, the wind turbines put into operation today will be nearing the end of their lifespan. The ones built 20 years ago are nearing it now. Since the blades are very difficult to recycle, the waste stream created by the retired blades is a mounting problem. According to a 2017 study published in the scientific journal Waste Management, the world’s wind industry will be producing 43 million tons of blade waste annually by 2050.