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.
This week on “Climate Change Roundtable,” host Anthony Watts and panelist H. Sterling Burnett will delve into the big report issued by the Biden Administration – NCA5, or the National Climate Assessment #5. The media went ballistic over this report, with CNN claiming, “No place in the US is safe from the climate crisis, but a new report shows where it’s most severe.” Similar claims were echoed by other media outlets, yet when you scrutinize the data, these claims are unsupported.
Joining us will be James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute and an expert in policy analysis, as we dissect this lunacy.
Tune into “Climate Change Roundtable #88.” We’ll be discussing National Climate Report #5, addressing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Additionally, we’ll cover the week’s craziest climate news and answer your questions.
“Climate Change Roundtable” goes live every Friday at 12 PM CT/1 PM ET. Join the live show and submit your questions for our panelists. To ensure your question gets addressed, leave it as a super chat, and we’ll guarantee it’s covered.
For over three decades, the reduction of CO2 emission was the primary motivation for promoting the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources. Concerns about the inevitable exhaustion of fossil fuels were considered particularly during energy crises, but these concerns died out quickly as discoveries of new fossil fuel reserves such as the shale revolution in the US that appeared to secure energy supplies.
An under-appreciated paper by Murphy et al. (1) offers very strong arguments that the energy transition is a must that has to happen in a short time. Anyone looking at Figure 1 from this paper should be more concerned about running out of fossil fuels than climate change. It is almost certain that the spike on Figure 1 will only last for a few centuries irrespective of the exact location of the star, and fossil fuel era will be only a fraction of the history of human civilizations. This period will not last long enough to deserve the proposed anthropocene[1] designation. The industrial era might rightfully be called a geological event that triggers post-anthropocene, but by no means will it last long enough to qualify as geological age or epoch.
Murphy et al. (1) demonstrates vividly how short the energy transition has to be via a seemingly absurd calculation based on the modest 2.4% annual growth rate () of energy consumption (originally observed in the US that the global energy consumption follows now). This growth rate conveniently corresponds to a 10-fold increase per century.
On a similar basis, a crude estimate of the declining limp of Figure 1 might be established by considering present day carbon concentration as a “fuel gauge”. If the total amount of fossil fuel buried under ground is proportional to the difference in atmospheric CO2 concentration at the time when fossil fuel formation started 500 millions years ago: (17) and the pre-industrial era: then the contemporary carbon concentration suggests that the fossil fuels burned so far is of the total reserves. The remaining 92% will be exhausted in if the energy consumption continues to grow at the present rate.
The peak on Figure 1 only started two or three generations ago when the grandparents of the baby boom generation were born and chances are that our grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) will live in the declining limp of the peak. The energy transition to sustainable energy sources solves climate change as a byproduct; by contrast, focusing on CO2 emission likely leads to accepting energy transition “compromises” that do only harm in the long run.
The solutions being advocated for the energy transition are i) reduced use of energy and ii) replacing fossil fuels with renewables. These became the primary tools that policy makers adopted in climate treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol[2] and Paris Agreement[3]. In reality, the Kyoto Protocol was based on the assumption that the “climate crisis” can be avoided by the developed nations cutting back some emissions and the developing nations remaining poor, as shown by “Some back of the envelop calculation” posted on Roger Pielke Sr.’s now defunct blog[4].
The rapid rise of energy consumption in emerging economies has led to the fading emphasis on reducing the use of energy. The energy transition now is primarily pushed forward via “net-zero” CO2 emission targets with unspecified penetration level of renewable sources. The net-zero targets don’t mean to eliminate the use of fossil fuels entirely. Instead, the remaining fossil fuel consumption is expected to be offset via some form of carbon sequestration.
After more than three decades of investment in renewables, there are few papers in the scientific literature demonstrating how modern economies can rely entirely on renewable energy resources, e.g. the publications of Mark Jacobson and his team from Stanford University (5, 7, 9, 10) that received harsh criticism (6).
1. Renewable energy sources
Advocates of renewable energy resources emphasize the apparent abundance of renewable energy emanating from the Sun, while neglecting the energy density reaching the Earth’s surface. Unsurprisingly, solar energy trails behind all other forms of renewable energy resource except geothermal (Figure 2). An often overlooked fact is that biomass is the largest segment of the renewable contribution satisfying energy consumption, and low-tech direct burning of wood is on par with heavily subsidized biofuels. This is even more pronounced in global energy consumption where the largest portion of the “renewable portfolio” comes from burning plant materials and animal waste.
If collecting solar energy was as easy as renewable advocates suggest, one has to wonder why direct solar energy has such a low share. Solar panels with their rapidly dropping prices should be the largest segment in renewable energy and yet it was wind power that bypassed hydro-power in recent years and occupies second place in renewable energy sources behind biomass.
Energy density clearly matters, and the more concentrated wind and hydro-power are still economically more feasible than harvesting the more abundant solar energy. Even, “the low-cost solution to 100% renewable energy” in the US by Jacobson et al. (11) envisions more energy coming from onshore and offshore wind (43,509TWhr yr-1) than from various forms of direct solar energy sources (39,901TWhr yr-1) such as rooftop and utility photovoltaic and concentrated solar.
Renewable energy proponents also emphasize that modern solar and wind turbines produce electricity directly, leaving out the energy and assuming that the electrification of heating will allow producing more heat than the consumed energy via the utilization of heat pumps. As an example, an earlier paper from Jacobson et al. (5) anticipated that global end-user energy consumption (excluding the losses during production and transmission) is projected to reach 16.92 TW by 2050 would stay at 11.47TW as a result of transitioning to renewable energy.
1.1. Stock vs. flux limited resources
The primary challenge in relying on renewable energy sources is aligning consumption with the availability of intermittent energy fluxes. The distinction between stock vs. flux limited resources was first proposed with respect to water resources (2), but it is applicable to other resources including energy. Relying on flux limited resources consumed within the flux limits are clearly the pathways to sustainability defined as “a form of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (3), but stock limited resources serve both as a source and storage.
Fossil fuels formed over hundreds of million years offer the inherent flexibility of allowing consumption as needed, Flux limited resources necessitates the alignment of the consumption with their availability unless supplemental storage is available. Surprisingly few scientific papers have attempted to address this alignment that is so critical for relying on intermittent energy sources such as solar or wind that are envisioned as the primary energy sources in a sustainable future.
1.2. Storage requirement for providing energy from solar or wind exclusively
A recently published paper by Fekete et al. (4) addresses the storage requirement for relying on solar or wind power only. This paper considered the seasonal and inter-annual variability of solar and wind by analyzing solar radiation and wind speed data averaged over the conterminous United States (Figure 3) vs. twelve selected states on the East Coast. A frequently repeated argument for neglecting the intermittency of renewables is that even if the Sun is not shining or the wind not blowing at a particular location and moment, the Sun is shining or the wind is blowing elsewhere so it is only a matter of establishing the necessary connectivity.
1. Renewable energy sources
Advocates of renewable energy resources emphasize the apparent abundance of renewable energy emanating from the Sun, while neglecting the energy density reaching the Earth’s surface. Unsurprisingly, solar energy trails behind all other forms of renewable energy resource except geothermal (Figure 2). An often overlooked fact is that biomass is the largest segment of the renewable contribution satisfying energy consumption, and low-tech direct burning of wood is on par with heavily subsidized biofuels. This is even more pronounced in global energy consumption where the largest portion of the “renewable portfolio” comes from burning plant materials and animal waste.
If collecting solar energy was as easy as renewable advocates suggest, one has to wonder why direct solar energy has such a low share. Solar panels with their rapidly dropping prices should be the largest segment in renewable energy and yet it was wind power that bypassed hydro-power in recent years and occupies second place in renewable energy sources behind biomass.
Energy density clearly matters, and the more concentrated wind and hydro-power are still economically more feasible than harvesting the more abundant solar energy. Even, “the low-cost solution to 100% renewable energy” in the US by Jacobson et al. (11) envisions more energy coming from onshore and offshore wind (43,509TWhr yr-1) than from various forms of direct solar energy sources (39,901TWhr yr-1) such as rooftop and utility photovoltaic and concentrated solar.
Renewable energy proponents also emphasize that modern solar and wind turbines produce electricity directly, leaving out the energy and assuming that the electrification of heating will allow producing more heat than the consumed energy via the utilization of heat pumps. As an example, an earlier paper from Jacobson et al. (5) anticipated that global end-user energy consumption (excluding the losses during production and transmission) is projected to reach 16.92 TW by 2050 would stay at 11.47TW as a result of transitioning to renewable energy.
1.1. Stock vs. flux limited resources
The primary challenge in relying on renewable energy sources is aligning consumption with the availability of intermittent energy fluxes. The distinction between stock vs. flux limited resources was first proposed with respect to water resources (2), but it is applicable to other resources including energy. Relying on flux limited resources consumed within the flux limits are clearly the pathways to sustainability defined as “a form of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (3), but stock limited resources serve both as a source and storage.
Fossil fuels formed over hundreds of million years offer the inherent flexibility of allowing consumption as needed, Flux limited resources necessitates the alignment of the consumption with their availability unless supplemental storage is available. Surprisingly few scientific papers have attempted to address this alignment that is so critical for relying on intermittent energy sources such as solar or wind that are envisioned as the primary energy sources in a sustainable future.
1.2. Storage requirement for providing energy from solar or wind exclusively
A recently published paper by Fekete et al. (4) addresses the storage requirement for relying on solar or wind power only. This paper considered the seasonal and inter-annual variability of solar and wind by analyzing solar radiation and wind speed data averaged over the conterminous United States (Figure 3) vs. twelve selected states on the East Coast. A frequently repeated argument for neglecting the intermittency of renewables is that even if the Sun is not shining or the wind not blowing at a particular location and moment, the Sun is shining or the wind is blowing elsewhere so it is only a matter of establishing the necessary connectivity.
Firstly, if the Sun was always shining and the wind was always blowing somewhere, then spatially averaged solar radiation and wind speed (Figure 3) would balance out to a relatively constant value over time for large enough regions. The conterminous United States is clearly not large enough, because solar radiation and wind speed vary substantially both seasonally and inter-annually (Figure 3). Solar radiation in particular has strong seasonality that should surprise-nobody living at higher latitudes. Without going into details discussed in Fekete et al. (4), the seasonality of solar and wind in the selected states are not very different from the CONUS-wide average. Therefore, the expansion of the electric grid (“Upgrade our power infrastructure to deliver clean, reliable energy across the country and deploy cutting-edge energy technology to achieve a zero-emissions future”) — that is one of the key objectives listed in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law[5] — will have little or no impact on addressing intermittency.
An “entertaining” element of the green agenda is the obvious contradictions in the advocated solutions. Green activists often view renewable energy as a means to reduce dependency on large-scale engineered infrastructures like the electric grid and suggest that renewables will allow communities to become more resilient and independent by disconnecting from the electric grid and live on “smart grids”. One has to ask, if autonomous “smart grids” were so “resilient”, then what is the purpose of the multi-billion dollar investment in long-distance grid connectivity?
In order to translate the seasonal and the inter-annual variability of solar radiation and wind speed, Fekete et al. (4) applied a modified surplus/deficit calculation taught to water engineers to size reservoirs for meeting water demand when the water resources vary. The simple surplus/deficit calculations are akin to accounting that any responsible person would carry out to align spending with income. Surplus/deficit calculations in Fekete et al. (4) were modified to incorporate factors to represent energy losses during sending the excess power to storage, the decay of the stored energy and the energy losses during retrieval via a) recharge loss, b) decay and c) a discharge loss coefficients.
The computations (Figure 4) were carried out in normalized terms so the resulting storage estimates can be interpreted as the fraction of the annual energy consumption that needs to be stored. The daily time series of solar radiation and wind speed data were translated to daily load factor by linearly scaling between starting and plateauing thresholds. The algorithm was developed for normalized energy consumption where the time varying consumption values are divided by their long-term means. The state level data from US Energy Information Agency[6] provide monthly consumption only for the electricity sector that often differs significantly from the seasonal variations of other forms of energy consumptions. Since, the seasonal variations of the energy consumptions are relatively small (deviates only by 10-15% of the annual average), the paper ultimately applied constant energy consumption.
Figure 4 shows the daily cumulative energy deficit (blue line) arising from the power shortage from solar or wind that is depleted when excess power is available from these sources. The highest deficit during the analyzed period (1980-2019) is the energy storage capacity needed to weather out the highest supply deficit. The storage simulation on the same graph (red line on Figure 4) shows the state (in percent) of the storage assuming that the storage initially is filled up completely and depleted regularly during periods of energy deficit and restored when excess power is available from solar or wind.
The modified deficit calculation incorporated an excess capacity factor (besides the various coefficient expressing energy losses) to ensure that the energy demand is meet even in those years where the availability of the solar and wind resources is the lowest. As a result, the computation provided estimates of the excess capacity factor and the energy storage requirement as a percent of the annual energy use (Table 1).
Based on the excess capacity factor, solar radiation is more steady inter-annually and has less year-to-year variability than wind speeds. While the excess capacity factor of solar energy is lower for the CONUS than the selected states, the excess capacity factor of wind energy is actually higher for CONUS than many of the states on the East coast. Based on these results, a nationwide grid might help to balance out inter-annual variability of solar energy, but some of the East coast states actually have more steady wind resources than the national average. The energy storage capacity needed to balance out the seasonal variability is marginally lower over CONUS than the selected states, so a national grid will have only make a modest contribution to alleviate seasonal power shortages from both solar and wind.
The storage capacity needed to align power generation from solar or wind is around 25% of the annual energy consumption, which is significantly higher than the few hourly or no energy storage factored in into typical life-cycle analysis comparing renewable and non-renewable energy sources (12, 13). In the absence of energy storage technology that can store several months worth of energy, one has to conclude that all studies suggesting that solar or wind are price competitive with other forms of energy should be retracted, since without storage neither could replace any other forms of energy that can deliver power on demand that the energy industry calls dispatchable.
2. Lessons learned from the peer reviews
Fekete et al. (4) undeniably undermines the green agenda promoting renewable energy sources (primarily solar and wind) as the primary backbone of the energy transition to a sustainable future, therefore it received mixed responses from reviewers.
One of the reviewers stated that “The manuscript contains fundamental errors that cannot be rectified through author revisions” without venturing into any details. In the rebuttal, the authors of Fekete et al. (4) pointed out that making unsupported statements is unscientific, unjust and unethical, since presenting argument is a vital element of scientific debate and reviewers are not entitled to make ex cathedra statements.
Fortunately, another reviewer found the paper “a timely research work; both clear and readable, and is an excellent contribution to knowledge in the related field.”
Besides the two poles of the reviewer responses, the authors received numerous supporting and objecting comments from other reviewers during the two rounds of evaluations. The integrity of the handling editor and the Frontiers in Environmental Sciences editorial staff deserve recognition for not only ignoring the rejection of objecting reviewer, but removing the inappropriate review entirely from their on-line review managing system.
2.1. Literature review
One of the reviewers criticized the paper for the lack of references to the “plethora of work” related to integrating renewables to the current energy systems and transitioning to a sustainable energy future. The reviewer provided ORCID links to five authors. In preparation for the rebuttal, the authors of Fekete et al. (4) rolled up their sleeves, downloaded and skimmed all the papers that the reviewer recommended. While the 360+ paper might not necessary represent the full spectrum of relevant papers, but a few patterns emerged:
The inter-annual and seasonal variations were rarely studied.
The vast majority of the studies were limited to diurnal and minute-by-minute variations.
The publications only investigated the use of few hourly storage capacities.
The primary sustainability metric was reducing CO2 emissions.
Most of the publications were limited to low renewable penetration.
No publication attempted to address complete decarbonization.
Even the most ambitious “deep decarbonization” scenarios stopped at 25-50% renewable contributions that was considered “high renewable penetration”.
One paper went as far as stating:
“Many studies suggest that large (>50%) CO2 emission reductions will not be possible without carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)” (14, 15).
This statement is remarkable and means nothing less than the admission that the transition to renewable is unsustainable since they will always require a sizable portion of energy to come for non-renewable resources. If this view is widely held by those studying the transition to renewable energy sources, then one has to wonder why they are not more vocal and alarm the public that the current net-zero goals will lead to a dead end.
Most of the reviewed papers assumed that solar and wind will be always supplemented by some form of “firm generation capacity”, which is the obfuscated name of using fossil fuels complemented with “carbon capture and sequestration”.
2.2. Energy units
Reviewers commented on expressing the annual energy consumption in power units (e.g. W, kW, MW, GW, etc.) while the industrial practice is to use energy units (Wh, kWh, MWh, GWh etc.). Fekete et al. (4) used these energy units but properly added a hidden (yr-1) dimension expressing that the proper expression would consider annual energy use as a rate of energy consumption. The authors of the Fekete et al. (4) are not alone and the late Sir David McKay (physicist and former adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change) expressed the same critique in his book (16).
The misuse of energy vs. power unit is highly visible when one considers how renewable energy facilities are reported. For instance the name plate capacity of the Tinton Fall solar farm is given as 19.88[MW] and the annual expected power generation is reported as 26,652 MWh yr-1. Expressing the expected annual production in power unit as 3[MW] makes it easier to compute 15% capacity factor even without calculator for those of us who otherwise would need one for dividing by 8760 hr yr-1.
Oddly enough, energy storage in the relevant literature is often expressed in power units (MW, GW) and only mention in the side notes that the storage facility sustains that power only for several hours.
3. Conclusion
Intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind will not be able to replace the firm (dispatchable) power generation from fossil fuels without massive energy storage on the order of several months worth of energy consumption. In the absence of such energy storage technology, one has to conclude that renewables are not viable alternative to fossil fuels. Only nuclear energy is a viable “stock limited” resource where the stocks are much larger than the jack pot from fossil fuels.
References
T. W. Murphy, D. J. Murphy, T. F. Love, M. L. A. LeHew, B. J. McCall, Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: Developing a PLAN for the future. Energy Research & Social Science 81, 102239 (2021). 2. P. H. Gleick, M. Palaniappan, Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, 11155–11162 (2010). 3. G. H. Brundtland, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future (Oxford University Press, 1987). 4. B. M. Fekete, M. Bacskó, J. Zhang, M. Chen, Storage requirements to mitigate intermittent renewable energy sources: analysis for the US Northeast. Front. Environ. Sci. 11, 1076830 (2023). 5. M. Z. Jacobson, M. A. Delucchi, Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials. Energy Policy 39, 1154–1169 (2011). 6. C. T. Clack, et al., Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201610381 (2017). 7. M. Z. Jacobson, et al., 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States. Energy Environ. Sci. 8, 2093–2117 (2015). 8. T. W. Murphy, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet (2021) https:/doi.org/10.21221/S2978-0-578-86717-5 (October 11, 2022). 9. M. Z. Jacobson, M. A. Delucchi, M. A. Cameron, B. A. Frew, The United States can keep the grid stable at low cost with 100% clean, renewable energy in all sectors despite inaccurate claims. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201708069 (2017). 10. M. A. Delucchi, M. Z. Jacobson, Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies. Energy Policy 39, 1170–1190 (2011). 11. M. Z. Jacobson, M. A. Delucchi, M. A. Cameron, B. A. Frew, A Low-Cost Solution to the Grid Reliability Problem With 100% Penetration of Intermittent Wind, Water, and Solar for all Purposes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (2015). 12. K. Branker, M. J. M. Pathak, J. M. Pearce, A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 15, 4470–4482 (2011). 13. C. S. Lai, et al., Levelized cost of electricity for photovoltaic/biogas power plant hybrid system with electrical energy storage degradation costs. Energy Conversion and Management 153, 34–47 (2017). 14. M. T. Craig, P. Jaramillo, H. Zhai, K. Klima, The Economic Merits of Flexible Carbon Capture and Sequestration as a Compliance Strategy with the Clean Power Plan. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51, 1102–1109 (2017). 15. P. J. Loftus, A. M. Cohen, J. C. S. Long, J. D. Jenkins, A critical review of global decarbonization scenarios: what do they tell us about feasibility? WIREs Clim Change 6, 93–112 (2015). 16. D. J. C. MacKay, Sustainable energy – without the hot air (UIT Cambridge Ltd., 2009). 17. G. L. Foster, D. L. Royer, D. J. Lunt, Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years. Nat Commun 8, 14845 (2017).
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service have violated federal law by finding that the Virginia Offshore Wind project will not result in the destruction of the North Atlantic right whale as a species
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (November 14, 2023) — The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) announced today that they are filing with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) a 60 Day Notice of Intent to Sue letter for a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The violation is contained in a defective “biological opinion,” which authorizes the construction of the Virginia Offshore Wind Project (VOW).
The 60 Day Notice is required by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for parties who wish to commence litigation against BOEM for failure to provide adequate protection of the North Atlantic right whale and other endangered species. The North Atlantic right whale is listed as “critically endangered” by governments of both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States. Numerous studies by federal and environmental organizations have found that only about 350 North Atlantic right whales remain in existence.
CFACT and The Heartland Institute assert that the Biological Opinion issued by the NMFS fails to consider the cumulative impact of the entire East Coast offshore wind program ordered by the Biden administration, and ignores the “best scientific information available” about the endangered population of the North Atlantic right whale. The biological opinion found that the VOW would not cause a single death of that species of whale over its 30-year projected lifetime — although it did acknowledge the wind project could result in Level B harassment. That level could, according to NMFS, result in indirect death, requiring the need for a “take” permit, which authorizes the “harassment” and potential killing of the North Atlantic right whale.
“We need to send a message to BOEM and NMFS that there will be legal consequences if they violate legal requirements for protection of the North Atlantic Right Whale,” said H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. “The Biden administration’s plan to industrialize the ocean along the East Coast must follow the law, and we will intervene, if necessary, to make sure that the North Atlantic right whale continues to exist as a species.”
“This letter officially puts BOEM on notice that CFACT is prepared to file suit in order to expose the agency’s clear violation of federal law in failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale,” said Craig Rucker, president of CFACT. “By refusing to consider the cumulative impact of the dozens of industrial offshore wind facilities, consisting of several thousand individual turbines planned for the East Coast, it adopted a piecemeal approach, which only considered each individual offshore wind project in isolation. This is clearly a ploy to artificially reduce the total impact of these projects on the North Atlantic Right Whale. This obvious violation of federal law was ignored by the oversight agencies but will not be tolerated by the courts.”
“BOEM has admitted that it produced noise control regulations for the North Atlantic right whale that were based on guesswork — not on the ‘best available science’ — as required by law,” said Collister Johnson, senior policy adviser for CFACT. “They have funded ongoing studies that will finally produce information necessary to determine the noise impacts of offshore wind factories on baleen whales, such as the North Atlantic right whale. The results will not be available until 2025, at the earliest. This is a further violation of federal law, in addition to ignoring the cumulative impacts.
“There is a reason why Dominion Energy’s stock price has declined by 50 percent over the past year,” Johnson added. “Investors know that Dominion’s wind project is a costly, risky gamble that has already driven most other East Coast wind developers to either renegotiate their utility contracts or abandon their projects altogether. If Dominion decided tomorrow to abandon this project, as it should, its stock price would improve dramatically, and a huge financial cloud hanging over its future would be removed.”
The 60-day notice letter instructs the federal government agencies to take corrective action to remedy the alleged violations. If no corrective action is taken, the signatories of the letter are allowed to seek relief through the courts. The most likely venue for this litigation would be the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The firm of Gatzke, Dillon and Ballance has filed the letter as counsel for the CFACT and The Heartland Institute. The firm is currently representing plaintiffs in ongoing litigation against BOEM and NMFS, who are opposing construction offshore wind projects in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.
Earlier this year, more than two dozen large dead whales washed up on the shores of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, directly following 11 offshore sonar mapping activities conducted by wind developers. These “site characterization” studies use high-powered sonar pulses to determine the proper areas for placing the wind turbines. Sonar mapping has been found to interfere with the hearing capabilities of marine mammals. Environmental groups have successfully sued the Navy to restrict sonar mapping being conducted in the Pacific Ocean.
The 60-day notice adds to the risks faced by Dominion Energy as it attempts to build an offshore wind generation facility that would be the largest such project of its kind in the world. Siemens Energy, which has been designated by Dominion as the supplier of the huge 14MW turbines for the project, recently announced a write down of €2.4 billion for the 3rd quarter, leading to an annual loss of €4.5 Billion, due to costly mechanical failures in its new wind turbines. The company has said its turbine failures are a “quality issue” which “will take years to fix.”
The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.
CFACT is a national non-profit organization founded in 1985 and based in Washington DC which believes that the power of markets and safe, proven technologies can offer humanity practical solutions to the world’s most pressing concerns.
Two and a half years ago President Xi promised to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects” in China. Before this solemn pledge the CCP had approved a blockbuster 54 gigawatts of coal fired power plants in just two years. Afterwards, to show how committed they were to Net Zero principles and international agreements, they *only* approved 131 GW. As President Xi promised — he’s “strictly in control” (of a massive increase). He’s also strictly in control of the world’s manufacturing.
When faced with this environmental catastrophe, the BBC told the world about China’s green power surge instead, and only mentioned the coal in passing as an aside. China had spawned a world record in coal plant construction, but apparently these coal plants are not so bad because many are built on renewable parks, “partly as backup for all the new wind and solar farms”. As if CO2 emissions are neutralized just by the presence of the sacred talisman of “renewables”. It’s a religion.
Just for comparison: has one 1,000 MW plant in the “pre -permit” stage. (Collinsville). A whole gigawatt of dreamtime coal plant. It’s so “pre” that even though it was suggested four years ago, and awarded $4m for a feasibility study, no feasibleness has been announced. In the same years, China built about 300 coal plants.
All this data on coal plants comes not from overpaid academics, Ministries of Energy, or publicly funded “news” broadcasters. None of them, apparently, give a toss about actual CO2 emissions. Instead, this was done by some NGO’s who are paid to be perplexed but at least they are honest in their confusion.
These people believe propaganda put out by both the UK and by China, and are caught in the headlights, genuinely surprised…
The recent about-face on coal is odd for Beijing, which generally under-promises and over-delivers on climate commitments. Controlling new coal power projects is one of the few pledges China has made from now until 2025. Furthermore, more coal power is not necessary to keep the lights on, since China has a booming clean energy sector.
By many measures, China is the front-runner in the global clean technology race. Its renewable energy investments accounted for 55 percent of the global total in 2022. Just two Chinese companies have captured over half of the world’s electric vehicle battery market, and 60 percent of electric cars sales in 2022 occurred in China.
Someone should tell them that “half the worlds renewables” only made 7% of China’s total energy needs.
CFACT is not just talking about the tragic mistake of offshore wind, we are taking action.
This week CFACT, partnering with The Heartland Institute, filed their joint intent to bring a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for abrogating their responsibility to protect the endangered Right Whale from the rush to construct wind turbines.
As we state in our press release, “The North Atlantic right whale is listed as ‘critically endangered’ by the governments of both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States. Numerous studies by federal and environmental organizations have found that only about 350 North Atlantic right whales remain in existence.”
Unprecedented numbers of whales have been found dead along our coasts as wind turbine construction proceeds. BOEM released its “biological opinion,” giving Dominion Energy a green light to proceed with building its 2,600 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project 27 miles off Virginia Beach. This biological opinion has numerous pitfalls, including a failure to rely upon the “best available science” and employing a piecemeal approach to assessing risk to marine mammals that minimizes their actual lethality.
If bureaucrats refuse to do their jobs, we aim to force them!
To make matters worse, the Biden Administration’s energy strategy is terribly misguided in claiming offshore wind will meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CFACT released a study this week which concludes, among other things, that “the net ‘carbon’ (carbon dioxide) reduction effects of offshore wind development are hugely negative and cannot justify further investments in this industry.”
You can read the entire study by David Wojick, Ph.D., and CFACT senior policy advisor Paul Driessen at CFACT.org.
The verdict is in regarding offshore wind. When one considers the incredible costs, its threat to the power grid, and the potentially severe threat to marine life, the way forward is simple…
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.
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