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US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

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Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#171

Post by cwal37 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #140
cwal37 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could go to the source and see[1]. > TotalEnergies has committed to invest approximately $1 billion—the value of its renounced offshore wind leases—in oil and natural gas and LNG production in the United States. Following their new investment, the United States will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar, up to the amount they paid in lease purchases for offshore wind. Under this innovative agreement driven by P…

Thanks, that's helpful. Pretty annoying the original article didn't link to its source given that it was just repeating the contents of a press release. Anyone know what these "ideological subsidies" are that they're referring to? Were they part of the agreement that was just terminated? Or was that just a vaguely related talking point they inserted into the press release for political reasons?

"ideological subsidies" for this administration means any policy supporting non-thermal and non-battery (to a lesser extent, although their lobby has pretty successfully extracted them from previous renewable associations they relied on) generating units.

To get more specific, you could say everything rolled back from the IRA as part of the BBB.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#172

Post by ceejayoz »

jchmbrln wrote: post #88
Ajedi32 wrote: post #71

HN title (currently reads "US govt pays TotalEnergies nearly $1B to stop US offshore wind projects") is editorialized and it's unclear to me whether it's accurate. The article says: > We're partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly $1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration's subsidies What's the deal with this lease deposit and how does "freeing it up" equ…

[flagged]

We paid them that to make wind farms.

They're now being allowed to keep the money, and not build wind farms.

Title seems accurate? It's the clear intention of the administration's actions here.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#173

Post by BoiledCabbage »

while_true_ wrote: post #101
Ajedi32 wrote: post #71

HN title (currently reads "US govt pays TotalEnergies nearly $1B to stop US offshore wind projects") is editorialized and it's unclear to me whether it's accurate. The article says: > We're partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly $1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration's subsidies What's the deal with this lease deposit and how does "freeing it up" equ…

NY Times phrases it as a reimbursement to TotalEnergies for relinquishing wind leases that they paid for. The US made the reimbursement contingent on them investing in fossil fuel projects. "The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels." Total waste of $1 Bil of taxpayer dollars. If the oil and gas industry want to shut down…

So TotalEnergies agreed to invest 1 billion is offshore wind during thr last Administration. The current Administration doesn't want any investment in renewables so they attempted to block it. A judge said the attempted block was unlawful. So then immediately the admin said something new and that instead there were "national security concerns" with building wind plants - (Which doesn't pass the smell test to me at all) and the project would be held up while untangling those.

My assumption is the company started getting upset at being toyed around and having their 1 billion investment completely stalled for so long. So the admin said we'll kill the wind if you do our fossil fuels instead. So shift your investment away from wind (we kill it and pay you back for what you investws) if you instead do fossil fuels. And that's what's being done.

So previously the company was spending 1billion on wind and getting some subsidies. Now they spend 2 billion, and get paid 1 billion from the tax payer. For them it's at best a wash, though likely a loss since I haven't heard they get subsidies with the fossil fules. And the tax payer instead of paying for tax credits or low interest loans or other subsidies that were part of wind power portion of the Inflation Reduction Act instead pay a full 1 billion dollars to the company.

> The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.

1. https://apnews.com/article/trump-offshore-wind-energy-climat...

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#174

Post by IshKebab »

angelgonzales wrote: post #97
IshKebab wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, I dunno if you just time travelled here from the 60s but there's this thing called global warming.

[flagged]

Wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity available. Even if you are a completely brain-dead climate change denier it makes sense from a financial perspective.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#176

Post by mothballed »

stared wrote: post #160
mikkupikku wrote: post #96

If the government would like to pay me to also not build wind turbines, hit me up. I mean, I wasn't going to build any in the first place, but I think this makes me qualified to continue not building any.

> [Major Major’s father's] specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On…

Shit like this has been happening since the first colonists came to the US. On of the first thing the Massachusetts Bay Company did in the 1630s was subsidizing the Winthrop Salthouse for decades ... which never successfully produced salt. Another thing commonly done was the English government or charters would gift land and then turn right around and buy it back at market price.

Just look at it as America going back to the colonial ages and then everything that's happening makes sense. The bad news is that people were willing to put up with that for over 100 year so there's no guarantee anyone will do anything for a long time.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#177

Post by tadfisher »

mikkupikku wrote: post #105
kube-system wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "clean coal", right? Of course it's clean, it's right in the name.

People laugh at this, but anthracite genuinely is cleaner than other coal in every regard save CO2 emissions. People just think it's a joke because they've come to believe that CO2 is the only coal emission worth caring about, which definitely isn't true.

The oxymoronic term "clean coal" refers to carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) technology [0], touted by the fossil fuel industry as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and continue employing coal workers.

Thus far, it is incredibly expensive, at a time when solar and wind generation is cost-competitive with fossil-fuel plants which don't employ CCS. It is simply a dead end. You can generate more renewable energy, and store it, for far less than it takes to equip and operate CCS in conjunction with a fossil-fuel-fired plant. Only direct government subsidy makes it viable for a vanishingly small amount of GHG emissions.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#178

Post by angelgonzales »

IshKebab wrote: post #174
angelgonzales wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity available. Even if you are a completely brain-dead climate change denier it makes sense from a financial perspective.

In this specific case the CEO stated that gas is the cheaper choice given their ~$1B they can spend.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#179

Post by Ajedi32 »

cwal37 wrote: post #171
Ajedi32 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that's helpful. Pretty annoying the original article didn't link to its source given that it was just repeating the contents of a press release. Anyone know what these "ideological subsidies" are that they're referring to? Were they part of the agreement that was just terminated? Or was that just a vaguely related talking point they inserted into the press release for political reasons?

"ideological subsidies" for this administration means any policy supporting non-thermal and non-battery (to a lesser extent, although their lobby has pretty successfully extracted them from previous renewable associations they relied on) generating units. To get more specific, you could say everything rolled back from the IRA as part of the BBB.

If it's just BBB they're referring to then I would call that a political talking point since that doesn't seem directly related to this deal.

Unless the subsidies being repealed explains why TotalEnergies seems happy to get out of the lease now even though they presumably thought it was a good deal for them back when they originally agreed to it. If that's true though then I don't know why neither the article nor the press release say anything about it other than in this vague allusion.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#180

Post by mindslight »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #168
standardUser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are taking money committed to a wind project and redirecting it towards burning fossil fuels - because what other lesson can we take from a global energy shock other than to increase our exposure to the next one? The company itself (France's Total) had already committed to the wind deal, so now the Trump admin is letting them off the hook, and using Trump's irrational refusal to issue licenses for wind power as…

[flagged]

It seems like you should want the types of vehicles that can avoid using fossil fuels to do so, to keep your own prices down?

What is with this attitude of reflexively interpreting the development of alternatives as if they are mandatory ?

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