“We congratulate Simon Kinsella for his fortitude and diligence. Other communities are in line for similar threats as from South Fork Wind proposal (Long Island). Pushback to agencies that thrust agreements and permits in favor of wind development without appropriate assessment is essential, economic issues aside.”

Simon Kinsella of Suffolk County New York is no stranger to legal proceedings. His filing last month with the District Court at District of Columbia follows a neat pattern of Citizen “water bearer” to environmental concerns raised for years now regarding South Fork Offshore Wind (Ørsted) with the Long Island Power Authority and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Department of the Interior).

The Biden Administration’s priority is industrializing large strips of coastal ocean water to get the radically uneconomic offshore wind industry going on the East Coast.…

“Dominion has proposed a lower utilization rate (42.5%) than the Block Island wind farm because of the weaker winds off Virginia. The output from that project is already underperforming, and the records of other older wind farms in Europe confirm that wind farm utilization rates are often lower than initially assumed. Plus, the utilization rate declines as turbines age.”

On August 5, 2022, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) approved the application by Virginia Electric and Power Company (Dominion Energy, VEP) to construct and operate the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. Hearings on the nine-year-old proposed project have revealed numerous high-risk issues, any one of which could make costs skyrocket for customers.  Instead, the SCC wants Dominion to shoulder one of them, causing Dominion to threaten to bail. Maybe it should for everyone’s sake.…

“Among the 867 findings extracted from the analysed publications [regarding offshore wind], 72% reported negative impacts, while 13% were positive.”

“The progressive expansion of OWFs [Offshore Wind Farms] to meet energy production objectives, including floating devices in deeper areas and farther offshore, faces relevant technical, economic, social, and ecological concerns worldwide.”

– “Reviewing the Ecological Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms,” npj Ocean Sustainability (2022).

Deep ecologists and rank-and-file environmentalists should shudder at the thought of industrial wind turbines talking over the coastal waters. The massive structures and electric cables to shore are bad enough. But the machinery’s low average-capacity factors and susceptibility to bad weather make for a very risky economic/ecological deal.

But economics scarcely matters to the Church of Climate. Carbon dioxide and fossil fuels are always worse.…

“The Schumer-Manchin bill provides that after 2024 the traditional PTC and ITC programs expire, but the benefits live on through the new “Clean Electricity” tax credit program.”

“Based on published project footprints of recently sited wind projects in Wyoming, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado, new wind turbines will spread across 30 million acres (50,000 sq. mi.) by 2032.”

The Schumer-Manchin bill passed by the US Senate this weekend and heading to the House erases any doubt whether Congress is serious about lowering inflation, addressing energy costs, or protecting the environment.

Ironically dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Schumer-Manchin will do nothing to reduce inflation. But what it will do is far worse. Schumer-Manchin will unleash the largest industrialization of U.S. open lands not seen since the damming of our western rivers.…