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US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

bbc.com

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Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#601

Post by bluGill »

pkulak wrote: post #560
bluGill wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly all of those are forests that are supposed to burn every year or two. Check with a forester knowledgeable in your specific area because there is no universal truth here. However the generalization that all forests in North America need to burn regularly for good health is true even though there are exceptions.

You’re arguing against someone who said “there should never be forrest fires”, but that person doesn’t exist.

There are a lot of such people. The whole Smokey the bear thing was trying to teach people that for decades.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#602

Post by Supermancho »

gehsty wrote: post #527

We need to be careful in not throwing the babies out with the bath water - the fees paid for the leases for these projects were so high that the projects would not be economically viable in the first place. The developers are probably doing back flips behind closed doors that they have exited these positions without major financial impairments. This does not mean that renewables or offshore wind should not be built i…

> the fees paid for the leases for these projects were so high that the projects would not be economically viable in the first place.

Can you explain where you got your information from?

* The leases were already paid for (in total) in 2022-2023 for $1bn.

* The expected output would have been 7gigawatts annually, which is a 5-7x return per year on paper.

* The sale of the lease is due to a regulatory blockade, not a traditional cost benefit analysis.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#603

Post by renegade-otter »

saagarjha wrote: post #4

> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies". I agree. This is why we are building offshore wind and not subsidizing fossil fuels, right?

Okay then - let's stop subsidizing gasoline, yeah?

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#604

Post by arethuza »

pavlov wrote: post #567
1dontknow_ wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like these comparison with Roman Empire but it seems too simplsitic and Ive learned that usually means "its not so right actually". Meaning for example, what about empires that actually survived or adapted? What did they do that we know exactly didnt the Roman Empire do that saved them? How does zeitgeist impact this in the sense that what ruined Roman Empire might save a nation today? Not trying to be negative, Im…

"what about empires that actually survived or adapted" — which ones exactly? Empires are pathological developments of nations. They don't tend to survive all that long.

Didn't the Roman Empire last nearly 1,500 years in one form or another?

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#605

Post by perpetuallunch »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #136
jeltz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All kinds of power generation are typically heavily subdized in some way. I do not think this "common sense" strategy exists.

There are too many interested parties involved in the energy sector. The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage at the single building level and interconnected through smart grids with neighbours. But that leaves out the government and all those interested parties so we're never ever getting that.

Sure.

But at the scale of a city or state one home uses close enough to zero power that it being a net user or net producer of electricity is irrelevant.

Scale up to tens of thousands of homes and suddenly you need an organising body approximating government to manage those homes being net users or net producers from moment to moment.

Additionally most cities tend to want to have commercial and industrial users of electricity, and energy more broadly. Your home solar & battery does approximately nothing to help them, and if any of the data is to be believed has resulted in electricity prices increasing for everyone.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#606

Post by kingkawn »

whack wrote: post #370
zmmmmm wrote: post #310

I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire and it was fascinating how eerily similar it was to the current state of the US. Overwhelmed by corruption and wars they make stupider and stupider decisions on ever larger scales, ever more frequently. And the population grows ever more cynical, eventually opting for authoritarianism before eventually the center can't hold any more and it all collapse…

Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest. It sure looks stupid when you look at America or the Roman Empire as a whole. But when you look at the specific individuals doing these "stupid" things, and the individuals enabling them, it is perfectly aligned with their own best interests.

Any worldview that calls destroying your own civilization self-interest deserves to fall

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#607

Post by jakebol »

janalsncm wrote: post #375
jfengel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us. Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.

Roughly 1/3 voted for the winner, 1/3 for the loser, and the rest didn’t vote. A majority did not choose this.

Many polls were done post election about preferences among non voters.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#608

Post by flir »

friendzis wrote: post #423
swiftcoder wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. The northernmost point in Texas would be at the extreme southern edge of Europe. The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain... If Europe can make solar work, so can the stat…

> If Europe can make solar work Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone ? Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without a…

> Pool together wind + solar + hydro

Plus stored power, plus biomass, plus nuclear, plus gas.

90% renewables is better than 80% renewables. Throwing up our hands and saying "we'll never reach 100%, lets pack the whole thing in" isn't a sensible approach.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#609

Post by swiftcoder »

friendzis wrote: post #423
swiftcoder wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. The northernmost point in Texas would be at the extreme southern edge of Europe. The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain... If Europe can make solar work, so can the stat…

> If Europe can make solar work Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone ? Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without a…

> Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone?

That is substantially moving the goalposts - nowhere in the world has built out sufficient solar to make that claim yet. The question is whether they can get there.

If you look at the table[1] for installed solar per capita, 9 of the top 10 countries are in Europe (the odd one out is Australia), so they are definitely giving it the old college try

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#610

Post by OroPla »

winter_blue wrote: post #536
imglorp wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies. Some say it's $31b/yr direct. If you factor in indirect costs like climate damage, health expenses, oil wars, etc, it's much higher. Renewables are much, much cheaper regardless of a little incentive, if there are any left. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...

It’s kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time that a democratic country like the U.S. is doing all these shenanigans like blocking clean zero carbon energy, while a communist authoritarian country is massively moving towards clean energy. Based on what our media and our education system teaches us, one would have assumed that common sense and sound logic would prevail in a democracy, but rather what we see is…

The thing we have called "democracy" for the past three hundred or so years is basically just shadow government by whoever has the deepest pockets to influence public opinion with propaganda and pay politicians to do what they want. The politicians get blamed and cycled out while everything continues as before.
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