Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Drugged up on Green dope… As Germany reels from a deep economic crisis driven by green policies, Chancellor Scholz promises a green economic wonder!
Fantasies of a green economic miracle. Image generated by DALL e 2.
Chancellor makes a rosy prediction
Now that large companies like BASF have announced plans to move operations out of Germany and multitudes of small businesses are facing bankruptcy due to high energy prices, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Socialist Party) has announced that investments in climate protection will bring Germany an “economic miracle”!
The comments, however, have led others to question whether the chancellor is still in touch with reality. Germany’s economy is groaning under recession, high inflation and a precarious energy supply.
Promises or fantasies?
“Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now promising a new economic miracle through investment in climate protection, regardless of the miserable economic situation in which the Federal Republic finds itself,” reports Germany’s new, critical online news site, Pleiteticker.de, which calls Scholz’s vision “absurd”.
“Because of the high investments in climate protection, Germany will be able to achieve growth rates for some time, as last seen in the 1950s and 1960s,” said the Chancellor.
Scholz also promises that the green economy will lead to a jobs machine and predicted “there will be a shortage of workers.”
German economy currently in trouble
But Pleiteticker reminds that things have in reality been developing very differently.
“Real wages most recently fell by 3.7 percent in 2022 compared with the same quarter of the previous year. At the same time, consumer prices rose by 8.6 percent, while food and energy prices increased by around 20 percent. Economists expect German GDP to fall in the first quarter of 2023, which would be the second time in a row – a recession. Major German companies, most recently BASF, are leaving the country.”
Spiraling energy inflation
“And every German citizen feels the fatal economic situation every day at the cash register or with the heating/ and electricity bill. So what world does Scholz live in to now claim that the problems will practically solve themselves? It’s probably the same world in which bakers don’t go bankrupt, they just stop working, ” Pleiteticker comments further.
Last September, German Economics Minister, Robert Habeck (Green Party), told a stunned national television audience that “companies won’t really go bankrupt, they’ll just stop producing.”
But the sonar blasting is very likely killing a lot of whales indirectly by inducing things like deafness and deadly behavior. Thus the Feds are lying by technical omission.
Press coverage of the tragic whale deaths is a supreme study in confusion, especially the foolish attempts to somehow exonerate offshore wind development. Here are some prominent examples.
The evergreen New York Times wins the race for worst coverage by claiming to explain the numerous recent whale deaths as due to online shopping. I am not making this up.
Their headline promises an explanation: “Why 23 Dead Whales Have Washed Up on the East Coast Since December”. The primary reason claimed is that East Coast shipping has increased due to people buying lots of stuff post Covid, especially online, and ship strikes account for a lot of the deaths.
Here is how NYT puts it: “Online pandemic buying habits are also fueling a record-setting surge in cargo shipments that last year made ports in New York and New Jersey the nation’s busiest. Much of the merchandise is now toted on far bigger ships — some of which have altered their routes to help alleviate the supply-chain chaos that last year left some store shelves bare. As a result, more whales appear to have found themselves in the direct path of more ships. “When the whales are in these channels,” said Paul Sieswerda, executive director of Gotham Whale, a New York City-based whale research group, “you have to cross your fingers and hope there are no collisions.”“
This ignores the role offshore wind plays in putting the whales into those busy ship channels.
The problem with this excuse is that ship strikes are a likely cause of death due to offshore wind development. NOAA predicts that many hundreds of whales will have been harassed by offshore wind sonar surveys, which likely causes a lot to flee into the nearby heavy traffic lanes. Some may even be deafened at the time.
So increasing ship traffic actually makes offshore wind more deadly. The widespread idea that ship strikes are an alternative to wind deaths is a complete fallacy.
The NYT also says that the coastal humpback whale population has increased and most of the deaths are humpbacks. But such an increase subjects even more whales to sonar harassment, again making it deadlier. Plus this ignores the fact that the humpback death rate suddenly tripled in 2016, as did the right whale die off, when large scale sonar harassment began.
More typical is the headline from the also-green Virginia Mercury: “Wind and whales: ‘No evidence’ links projects to deaths”. No “link” is the prevailing mantra.
In reality the link is staring us in the face. It is the dozen active, large scale sonar harassment projects presently lining the coast from Virginia to Massachusetts. A whale’s reaction to sonar harassment can easily become deadly. In fact the NOAA harassment potential is calculated based on how many whales are forecast to be exposed to unsafe sonar noise levels.
It is suspiciously odd that no article I have seen even mentions these widespread, ongoing sonar harassment numbers. Is this appalling ignorance or a cover up?
I do know of one case where the failure to mention the scourge of sonar harassment is deliberate. This is in several recent articles on whale deaths in USA Today.
Before these articles were written I had a lengthy correspondence on the death threat of sonar harassment with one of the authors. The author even said they had looked at the long list of NOAA numerical harassment authorizations. Yet not one word was said about this quantitative threat in a subsequent article.
Of course the folks at NOAA and BOEM know all about the authorized ongoing harassment of hundreds of whales. They tend to say there is no “direct link” by which they mean the sonar is not killing the whales directly, which is true. The whales are not being killed by the sound blasts.
But the sonar blasting is very likely killing a lot of whales indirectly by inducing things like deafness and deadly behavior. Thus the Feds are lying by technical omission. News articles then compound this deception by using the term “link” more generally.
In truth the link between sonar harassment and whale deaths is obvious. It is this link that needs to be investigated.
A small pod of white-beaked dolphins entrapped on Friday (10 March) by a sudden surge of ice along the northern Newfoundland coast were lucky to have been rescued by humans before polar bears could get to them.
A small pod of white-beaked dolphins entrapped on Friday (10 March) by a sudden surge of ice along the northern Newfoundland coast were lucky to have been rescued by humans before polar bears could get to them.
We know the bears are around, drawn south by the millions of harp seals giving birth to their pups in the area. In April 2014, something similar happened to white-beaked dolphins in Svalbard and they became a welcome meal for at least six polar bears (Aars et al. 2015).
White-beaked dolphins are found throughout the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. They are active swimmers and often “surf” the waves created by vessels. They are usually found in groups of five to 30 individuals but sometimes travel in groups of up to 1,500.
White-beaked dolphins hunt for food both near the water’s surface and along the ocean bottom. Some fishermen in Canada call these dolphins “squidhounds” because they eat squid and octopi.
It appears most of the dolphins trapped along the shoreline in Trinity Bay ice on Friday may have found a path to safety.
About 15 of the white-beaked mammals were first spotted in trouble on Friday morning off Heart’s Delight-Islington.
Residents, assisted by the local fire department and DFO., quickly sprang into action, moving some from one side of the harbour to the other. Wayne Ledwell, with the Whale Release and Strandings Group, was also on the scene, and described the effort to move three of the dolphins to open water a little farther away.
He says they were stabilized in the water before someone suggested using a snowmobile sled, used for hauling wood, to hoist them into the back of a truck. They were then driven to nearby Whiteway where the process was reversed on the slipway, and they were released again into ice-free water.
It’s believed two or three in the original pod may have perished as they were forced closer to shore by the jagged ice.
Ledwell says others were spotted moving through a path to open water this morning, but he notes they’ll still have to deal with heavy pack ice further offshore.
White-beaked dolphins are common in Newfoundland waters.
A similar situation involving a half dozen of the creatures unfolded in the same area in 2018, with a successful rescue operation that took days to complete.
Historical records indicate this is a fairly regular occurrence in Newfoundland (Hai et al. 1996).
In March 2018, excavators and boats were used to cut a path through the ice, which allowed the ice-entrapped dolphins to escape to open water, as shown in the video below.
Ice conditions
It’s clear what happened when you look at the ice charts for the region for the days leading up to the dolphins being trapped. On Wednesday 8 March, Trinity Bay where Hearts Desire is located (map above), was largely ice-free but loosely-packed ice (light green) was moving in from the north.
By Thursday, the ice had advanced, with more compacted ice (7-8/10, orange) sealing the mouth of the bay.
By Friday, when the animals were discovered trapped in ice along the beach close to town, fairly concentrated ice had moved down the eastern shore of Trinity Bay. There was open water in the bay but no clear passage to the open ocean:
By Saturday, 11 March, the ice had moved out of the bay but the animals are still trapped within it, with fairly concentrated ice blanketing the entire area to the north.
A similar incident happened in northern Svalbard in 2014, which was blamed on global warming and attracted polar bears to feed on the trapped dolphins. The excerpt below (pg. 4) is from the paper by Jon Aars and colleagues published in 2015, which included the photo above:
Earlier observations of white-beaked dolphins as far north as northern Spitsbergen have all been made in summer and autumn (June–November; Fig. 2. Prior to this report, no recording of the species has been made in winter or spring this far north in Svalbard. The fjords and around the coast of northern Spitsbergen, an area normally covered by annual ice, were ice-free in winter 2013/14. It is likely that the presence of the dolphins in early spring was due to the lack of sea ice in the period prior to our observation.
Ice maps indicated open water as late as 28 March, but dense ice in Raudfjorden from 4 April. In the period 17–18 April, strong northerly wind packed drift ice into the fjords. We speculate that this event led to the entrapment of white-beaked dolphins, including the two we found dead. Entrapment, and later suffocation, of white-beaked dolphins in areas with heavy pack ice has earlier been reported along the coast of Newfoundland.
…In Raudfjorden, at the same location as our observations in April, at least five different carcasses were observed between 2 July and 1 September. One adult male and one adult female polar bear were seen feeding on the dolphins. Farther to the west, in the bay Frambukta, one dolphin carcass was observed on 4 July, where two bears were seen feeding on it. Another carcass was found on 22 July in Liefdefjorden, to the east of the initial observations. It was scavenged by two polar bears.
The observations indicate that entrapments of pods of white-beaked dolphins may provide a significant source of food for some bears locally over a longer period of time after such an incident.[my bold]
References
Aars, J., Andersen, M., Breniére, A. and Blanc, S. 2015. White-beaked dolphins trapped in the ice and eaten by polar bears. Polar Research34: 26612. Open access https://doi.org/10.3402/polar.v34.26612 Pdf here.
Abstract Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) depend on sea ice, where they hunt ice-associated seals. However, they are opportunistic predators and scavengers with a long list of known prey species. Here we report from a small fjord in Svalbard, Norwegian High Arctic, a sighting of an adult male polar bear preying on two white-beaked dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) on 23 April 2014.
This is the first record of this species as polar bear prey. White-beaked dolphins are frequent visitors to Svalbard waters in summer, but have not previously been reported this far north in early spring. We suggest they were trapped in the ice after strong northerly winds the days before, and possibly killed when forced to surface for air at a small opening in the ice.
The bear had consumed most parts of one dolphin. When observed he was in the process of covering the mostly intact second dolphin with snow. Such caching behaviour is generally considered untypical of polar bears. During the following ice-free summer and autumn, at least seven different white-beaked dolphin carcasses were observed in or near the same area. We suggest, based on the area and the degree to which these dolphins had decayed, that they were likely from the same pod and also suffered death due to entrapment in the ice in April. At least six different polar bears were seen scavenging on the carcasses.
Twenty-one ice entrapments, nine strandings and three incidental captures in fishing gear of White-beaked Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) 1979-1990 in Newfoundland waters are summarized.
All the panic about islands disappearing is nothing compared to what nature does all the time. Indeed, man-made climate change, if it has done anything at all — has been a boon for islands in the last fifty years.
A new paper shows islands are young, dynamic creatures, and mother nature is mean. And nothing we see today on Indian or Pacific Islands is unprecedented. All the panic about islands disappearing is nothing compared to what nature does all the time. Indeed, man-made climate change, if it has done anything at all — has been a boon for islands in the last fifty years.
The new paper by Kench et al looked at 1,100 islands across the Pacific and Indian oceans, and even though CO2 levels rose from 325ppm to an apocalyptic 420ppm, the average island got bigger instead of smaller, and only 3 small uninhabited islands completely disappeared. And when we say small, some of the islands we are tracking are mere 30m wide sand spits. Is it really fair to call that an “uninhabited island”?
The world may have Olympic-sized junkets every year because shorelines have moved 40m in the last fifty years, but it turns out that shorelines moved 200 meters before anyone built a coal plant.
This, below, is just the last fifty years in the life of Kandahalagalaa Island, and about 20% of the island has shifted.
Currently sea levels are rising 3mm a year, but in its short life sea levels at Kandahalagalaa have already gone down and up some 900mm without humans doing a damn thing.
Satellite data is all very well for the last fifty years, but it can’t tell us whether islands used to move so much before humans invented the Ford Model T. So Kench and co. got very serious about one little island in the Maldives with the tongue-twisty name Kandahalagalaa. They drilled the holy smoke out of it, and radiocarbon dated the layers until they pieced together its history. They discovered that its whole life has been in a state of flux. It only emerged out of the ocean a during the dark ages, 1,400 years ago, shifted and grew to the south, and the ocean has turned a lot of the island upside down.
The Kench team are data nerds and did some serious drilling — taking some 154 sediment samples from 20 cores, they used 23 samples of a particular green algae to do radiometric age tests. They also did laser levels six different ways to survey the island. They took 11 other cores of outcrops, and used four different satellites to get lots of photos of the shoreline.
Supplementary Figure 2: The drill holes
This is one churned island
Most of the cores were upside down, with the older layers at the top. Nature is evidently reworking the island, dropping 1100 year old deposits on top of 300 year old ones, in various combinations that were different in nearly every hole.
They drilled lots of holes and found the islands age history was a jumble of old layers on younger layers (ages in red)
1,100 Islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans are stable
Despite the threat of man made climate change, nearly every island larger than a tenth of a square kilometer is the same size as it was or expanding. This is an update on a previous survey of 700 islands which showed they were mostly growing. It’s not necessarily an improvement — Kench et al appear to have just added 400 teeny tiny islands to spread the splatter on the left hand side.
Notice how the log scale gives tiny islands a big role? An island 0.01 km2 is a mere 100m by 100m across. Half the graph is really plotting the fate of shifting sand dunes.
The authors comment that they were unable to implicate climate change:
Collectively, these studies have been unable to establish specific environmental drivers of island change, nor directly and unambiguously implicate climatic change as a mechanism for observed changes. To date, local-scale processes appear to have blurred any climatic change signal22,24.
Translated: even though everyone says climate change is real and obvious expert researchers couldn’t find a signal above the noise. I suspect Kench et al were disappointed not to find that signal, given he was not happy some skeptics used his study a few years ago. But full credit to the team for being so dedicated at collecting data and writing it up so honestly.
Islands were forming as the holocene sea levels fell
Giving some idea of just how young these islands are, Kench et al reviewed about 15 different studies of islands between the Maldives and Fiji and found that the oldest known samples from each was about 1,500 to 7,000 years old (black circles below). Holocene sea levels (marked in blue) were an unthinkable 2 meters higher 5,000 years ago. Sea levels have been falling around Australia for thousands of years.
The little very-drilled island of Kandahalagalaa is “e” below, with the oldest samples from nearly 3,000 years ago, presumably underwater then, since that was long before Kench declares it it to have emerged from the sea.
b Summary of reef island evolution studies highlighting the onset and period of island accumulation in the mid-to-late Holocene. Blue-shaded area defines the envelope of sea-level behaviour in the Indo-Pacific. The solid black circle denotes the earliest radiometric age, the coloured circle denotes the mean radiometric age of samples, vertical line denotes the latest radiometric age. Different coloured circles reflect islands in different reef provinces and the letter inside the circle denotes specific islands, a = Mainadhoo, b = Boduhini, c = Galamadhoo, d = Baavanadhoo, e = Kandahalagalaa, f = Kondey, g = Vaadhoo, h = Dhakandhoo, i = Hulhudhoo, j = Thiladhoo, k = Cocos (keeling) Isld., l = Warraber, m = Bewick, n = Lady Elliot Isld., o = Mba, p = Tepuka, q = Tutaga, r = Laura, s = Jabat, t = Jeh, u = Jabnodren, v = Jin, w = Malamala, x = Navini, y = Makin. Source references of data are listed in Supplementary Table 1.
h/t Kenneth Richards, El Gordo, Another Ian.
REFERENCES
Kench, P.S., Liang, C., Ford, M.R. et al. (2023) Reef islands have continually adjusted to environmental change over the past two millennia. Nat Commun14, 508 doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36171-2
Note the comment that banks are “increasingly focussed on the risk” of climate change.
It’s little wonder that the FSOC, together with some of the banks it seems, failed to see the elephant in the room!
I mentioned the collapse of SVB on Friday, and as was feared the contagion has spread with another bank going under, Signature Bank, which I gather is the third biggest bank to go bust in the US– SVB was the second. Other banks have seen massive write downs and suspension of share trading:
One serious question being raised in the US is where have the bank regulators been in the last few months, when it was clear that rising interest rates posed such an existential threat to banks’ balance sheets.
Bank regulation is the responsibility of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which works under the auspices of the US Treasury. It was established in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Act.
One of the reasons why they appear to have taken their eyes off the road is that at its very first meeting under the Biden administration, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put climate change on the agenda:
The real problem is not sea level rise, even if it occurs, or the Bass Coast Shire council. The problem is the authoritarian, deep green Victorian state administration
Local governments attempting to apply new Victorian state sea level rise building permit rules to residential blocks bought in good faith are creating legal chaos.
Coastal councils urge action after rejecting permits over sea level rises
Coastal councils are pleading for state government guidance as they find themselves rejecting planning permits for new houses because of the risks of rising sea levels.
Bass Coast Shire is among several Victorian councils in coastal locations saying it is being forced to dash the dreams of beachside living due to the risk of inundation.
They fear the ad hoc nature of the current system leaves them open to costly claims for compensation and lengthy tussles with landowners through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
To further complicate matters, the state government is also at odds with some councils over its sea level rise predictions, which are based on 15-year-old projects and considered outdated by many scientists.
The real problem is not sea level rise, even if it occurs, or the Bass Coast Shire council. The problem is the authoritarian, deep green Victorian state administration, which appears to believe they have an unfettered right to tell people what risks they can take with their own property – even when that involves changing the ground rules after people have purchased residential land in good faith.
While woke ESG policies obviously did not help, the real reason for SVB’s collapse was the rapid rise in increase rates, which in turn devalued their assets held in government bonds.
And the main factor behind the rise in interest rates was the explosion in federal spending and deficits, which were the direct result of Biden’s policies.
Let this be a reminder that there is no such thing as a magic money tree, which all UK parties still seem to believe in, not least to finance Net Zero.
The UK’s biggest climate problem is that most major non-Western countries – the source of over 70% of CO2 emissions and home to 84% of humanity – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority, focusing instead on economic development, poverty elimination and energy security. As a result, global emissions are increasing and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future whatever the UK (the source of less than 1% of global emissions) may or may not do. It therefore makes absolutely no sense for Britain to continue its pursuit of the unachievable and disastrous net zero policy. The neo-colonial suggestion that we should be leading the world or setting an example is simply embarrassing.
Britain needs a fresh start. We need to establish an optimum course in a world where we’re rapidly losing influence, where greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise and where our trying to prevent that from happening is futile. Instead therefore we should abandon net zero and similar policies – necessitating the repeal or radical amendment of the 2008 Climate Change Act – and come to terms with international political reality by: (a) prioritising a strong and growing economy, underpinned by reliable, affordable energy; (b) encouraging research into the development of technologies for delivering practicable, reliable, inexpensive low emission energy; and (c) focusing on long-term adaptation to whatever climate change may occur.
Abandoning net zero would have immediate practical advantages. It would lift the terrifying threat of extensive electricity blackouts – a threat to thousands of businesses and in particular to the well-being of hundreds of thousands of people, especially the poor and vulnerable. It would mean getting rid of many – hopefully most – green levies and subsidies. It would enable people and businesses to continue with the increasingly efficient and clean internal combustion engine, saving the vast sums needed to power electric vehicles and to build a nation-wide charging network. It would mean millions of households and businesses could retain their current gas heating appliances. It would mean we could continue to rely on the commercial aviation and shipping businesses that underpin international trade and on the many other machines and products essential to our lives and well-being that require the combustion of fossil fuels or are made from oil derivatives. It would mean reducing many ‘green’ pressures on industry and commerce – keeping costs down and encouraging productivity and employment. It would ensure that we didn’t further increase our already dangerous dependence on China.
A concluding thought. All the above advantages of abandoning net zero are clear and obvious. And the disadvantages? There are none. Even if we face a ‘climate emergency’ – I suspect we don’t, but if we do – Britain’s pursuit of net zero cannot help us avoid it. Yet both our major parties are committed to this disastrous and pointless policy. If one of them were to recognise that and abandon the policy, explaining plainly and carefully why it’s doing so, I believe it would halt the relentless advance of the vast, wealthy and self-righteous climate establishment. And seriously damage the other party.
At the very least, political leaders backing the net zero agenda should reconsider imposing on their citizens economic damages equivalent to a war for no good result.
Implementing net zero will depress the global economy more than the atmospheric warming that the campaign against carbon dioxide emissions is supposed to prevent, according to a comparison of research by recognized experts. In other words, abandoning efforts to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels likely would make virtually everybody richer.
Dr. Schernikau reviews cost of “human” disruptions such as from Covid or the Ukraine-Russia war with estimates of implementing net zero, which were calculated by consultants McKinsey & Company and Wood Mackenzie, and projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for atmospheric warming’s effect on GDP.
According to the data, the cost of implementing net zero would range from seven to 10 percent of GDP by 2050 while the cost of abandoning net zero would be but a fraction of that – 0.5 to four percent of GDP from a temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. The difference is measured in many trillions of dollars. Moreover, the higher cost of net zero is compounded by being incurred 50 years earlier than the predicted effect of warming.
“When we step back and look at predictions for warming and GDP growth (gross domestic product), we must consider that the more wealth we create the better people can withstand severe weather or whatever climate impacts there might be,” says Dr. Schernikau.
Neither McKinsey nor Wood Mackenzie acknowledges in its report that it would be more harmful to the global economy to implement net zero than to allow the projected warming to occur. In advocating for a reduction of CO2 emissions, they simply accept the narrative of proponents.
Significant uncertainties are noted in all the analyses, leading one to think that Dr. David Wojick may be onto something when he writes that the “math of chaos” makes long-term predictions of climate impossible.
A Nobel Prize-winning economist referenced by Dr. Schernikau also agrees that GDP growth would be greater without a net zero campaign and concludes that avoiding the predicted temperature rise is virtually impossible in any case. Writing in the American Economic Journal, Dr. William Nordhaus says that “there is virtually no chance that the rise in temperature will be less than the target 2°C even with immediate, universal, and ambitious climate change policies.”
So, in addition to the economic case for net zero being, well, zero, the chance of averting the supposed greenhouse warming is nil and predicting the climate 80 years from now is impossible. It gets even worse for the narrative of green new dealers when the benefits of fossil fuels and CO2’s fertilization effect are taken into account.
For example, fossil fuel-dependent technologies have increased agricultural yields directly or indirectly by at least 167 percent, according to a report by Dr. Indur Goklany, a 30-year veteran of the climate debate and an author of books on the subject. Consequently, the world sustains 10 times more people today than at the start of the Industrial Revolution – about 8 billion versus fewer than 800 million – while supporting more biomass.
For a bit of context, included in Dr. Schernikau ’s analysis is a report from British oil company BP, which lists the costs of the Russia-Ukraine conflict to be as much as six percent of global GDP by 2100. That is 50 percent more than the alleged effect of man-made global warming – if there is any such thing – and nearly the cost of eliminating carbon emissions.
At the very least, political leaders backing the net zero agenda should reconsider imposing on their citizens economic damages equivalent to a war for no good result.
Sky News faithfully regurgitate the glowing press release from the developers. (Apparently this is now called “journalism”!)
Backing has been given to the first floating wind farm off the Welsh coastline.
The Welsh government has given consent for the project, which will be located 40km off the Pembrokeshire coast in West Wales, to proceed.
Kincardine offshore wind farm off the coast of Scotland. Pic: Blue Gem Wind
Project Erebus is expected to provide enough low carbon energy to power 93,000 homes.
It will include seven 14-megawatt turbines, and is part of the first phase of a renewable energy development in the Celtic Sea which is set to generate four gigawatts of energy – enough to power four million homes and businesses.
The current expectation is that Blue Gem Wind, a joint venture between TotalEnergies and Simply Blue Group, will begin operating the Erebus project in 2026 – but it now hopes to secure UK government funding.
Mark Drakeford, Wales’ First Minister, said: “The Erebus project has the potential to show the world that Wales and the Celtic Sea can deliver renewable energy alongside the sustainable management of our marine resources.
“In determining the marine license and the planning consents, the Welsh government and our partners in Natural Resources Wales have enabled this project to move forward to apply for subsidy support from the UK government.
“I urge the UK government to do its part through the Contracts for Difference process to drive the industry forward by working with the Erebus team to secure the first floating offshore wind project in Welsh waters, bringing jobs and green energy to our communities.”
There is nothing revolutionary about floating wind farms; they are simply wind turbines placed on top of a rig. The logic is that they can be sited in deeper water further from shore, where in theory wind speeds are higher.
The claim that this one will power 93,000 homes is the usual legerdemain, as it ignores non-domestic consumption which accounts for two thirds of the total electricity used. When these are all taken into account, the real figure is just 35,000 homes.
And, as ever, it all boils down to cost. Hywind off the Scottish coast is the only commercial floating wind farm in the UK at the moment. Built in 2017, it is slightly smaller than Erebus, and receives about £190/MWh in ROC subsidies. It seems likely that Erebus will need a similar level of subsidy.
The project is estimated to cost $478 million, about £400 million, equivalent to £11,000 for each of those lucky 35,000 homes! The capital cost works out at £2805/KW, compared to £1630/KW for the new Hornsea wind farm being planned. In other words, Erebus looks like being highly uncompetitive, and will rely on big subsidies.
As with Hywind, the claim is that costs will fall rapidly once the technology is established. But that has not happened in the years since Hywind became operational, and developers are not queuing up to build more of them.
As with the Swansea tidal lagoon, the Welsh government would love to see the project go ahead, just as long as somebody else pays the cost!
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