“Public and regulatory pressure continues against LEEDCo. Freeing the fresh-water lakebed from a billionaire foreign developer using US taxpayer dollars is Step One. Step Two is bringing New York Governor Cuomo’s green fantasy back to earth.”

This Thursday, September 17, 2020, the Ohio Power Siting Board will revisit the LEEDC0 decision of this May that placed significant environmental conditions on the project.

For years, MasterResource has followed the LEEDCo (Lake Erie Energy Development Corp) offshore wind application, what is now owned by Icebreaker Windpower, Fred Olsen Renewables. The massive-sized 6-turbine 20.7 MW project offshore Cleveland has produced a decade of controversy and false starts, and no electricity, with generous DOE funding underwriting the futility.

LEEDCo is on life support. The Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) approved the project in May subject to 33 conditions, the most significant being the turbine blades must be “feathered” or shut down at “night” (usually dusk to dawn) during the eight months of migration of many species. …

“If we believe that somehow the market is going to take care of this, that you put a price on carbon and everything will sort itself out, or that we can shame companies into doing it, then I think we’re kidding ourselves. This needs a very significant interventionist approach and all industries have to be part of the intervention.”

– Ben van Beurden, CEO, Royal Dutch Shell. Quoted in Akshat Rathi and Laura Hurst, “Look Who’s Talking About Zero Emissions.” (Bloomberg: June 9, 2020)

Enron’s Ken Lay. BP’s John Browne. Duke Energy’s James E. Rogers. T. Boone Pickens. GE’s Jeff Immelt. And now Shell’s Ben van Beurden.

Welcome to the swamp of political correctness when industry leaders morph into apologists for mineral energies and endorse open-ended government intervention for forced energy transformation from dense, reliable energies to dilute, intermittent ones.…

It is high time that real environmentalists stand up. Government subsidies and business cronyism to despoil pristine nature is surely a call-to-arms about the limits to growth.

Al Gore? Bill McKibben? Where are you? Do you want another data point for a sequel to Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans?

As it is, a group of Ohio Representatives and Senators is showing their environmental bona fides–and respect for electricity ratepayers– regarding the Icebreaker Wind Turbine Project (aka Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, or LEEDCo).

Refresher: LEEDCo is a six-turbine, 20.7 MW offshore wind demonstration project eight miles from downtown Cleveland in Lake Erie. The first freshwater offshore wind project in North America, the project has received huge subsidies from the US Department of Energy in addition to the federal Production Tax Credit.…

One of the telltale signs of how broken the Texas electricity market is: The number of corporations with multi-billion dollar market caps coming here in pursuit of billions of dollars of renewable energy subsidies. The Spanish multi-national electric utility company, Iberdrola, which describes itself as “the utility of the future,” is the latest.

Enter Iberdrola:

July 08, 2020 – Iberdrola Texas today announced its entrance into the Texas marketplace, offering customers a more affordable, renewable energy option that’s 100% sourced within the state. Texas is the number one state for wind production in the U.S., and Iberdrola’s presence in Texas will meet the demand for reliable and competitive green energy options. Iberdrola Texas sets itself apart by providing consumers with wind energy generated from its Iberdrola group-owned Texas wind farms.