“Why was there only one bid in response to Rhode Island Energy’s RFP if offshore wind is desirable (politically) and key to decarbonizing our economy? Was it because inflation and high-interest rates caused developers to hesitate over whether they could earn a reasonable profit?”

Last October, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee announced a request for proposals (RFP) for offshore wind procurement in compliance with a new law.  The law required the State’s primary utility company, Rhode Island Energy, to seek to contract up to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of new offshore wind generating capacity at market-competitive rates. 

This offshore wind procurement has the potential to satisfy 30% of Rhode Island’s estimated 2030 electricity demand.  When added to the 30-MW Block Island Wind farm and the contracted 400-MW Revolution Offshore Wind 1 project, the state will have secured about half of its projected energy needs from offshore wind. …

“With two of the three projects in trouble, Massachusetts will not meet its clean energy goals, and when they do, the power prices will be higher than expected…. The energy chaos in the state is getting interesting with significant implications for the offshore wind business.”

The ongoing saga of Commonwealth Wind’s future took another twist in late January when it filed with the Massachusetts Supreme Court a petition to set aside the order by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (PUC) issued on December 30, 2022, approving the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) prices negotiated with the three local utilities purchasing the electricity.

The challenging, worsening economics have upset the future of the project. Avangrid, the developer of the Commonwealth Wind project, wishes to renegotiate the PPA prices or to have them rejected by the PUC which would then allow Avangrid to rebid the project’s output in the next Massachusetts wind power solicitation scheduled for this spring.…

“Al Gore was right about one thing in his rant at the World Economic Forum in Davos: CO2 emissions have continued to climb and show no sign of being affected by ‘climate policy’.” (Jenkins, below)

In less than 800 words, Holman Jenkins, a Wall Street Journal opinion columnist (Feb. 4 – 5, 2023), cut the whole global warming mania down to size. Basically, it’s all over but the shouting. The science is “looking up,” (it never looked down, actually), for reasons that Jenkins only partially examines. And ExxonKnew as a PR stunt is exposed.

Below, I parse Jenkins’s op-ed with subtitles and let his words speak for themselves.

The Al Gore Problem

Al Gore was right about one thing in his rant at the World Economic Forum in Davos: CO2 emissions have continued to climb and show no sign of being affected by “climate policy.”…

“To the extent that the challenges that the article documents are more real than Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 declaration that ‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over,’ the best response is to ignore the scientists’ solutions.”

In January 2021, Paul and Anne Ehrlich and a host of other famous scientists published the grimly titled article, Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future. The piece appeared in the online journal, Frontiers in Conservation Science, “where,” the masthead informs us, “scientists empower society.”

The heavily footnoted article warns that continued population growth will lead to increased consumption which will, in turn, result in loss of biodiversity leading to a 6th mass extinction, climate change leading to mass migrations, declining child health, water and earth toxification, more pandemics, increased terrorism, war over resources, and greater material inequality.…