Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 933 posts

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

#771

Post by mekdoonggi »

christkv wrote: post #151

Offshore wind projects when you have tons and tons of empty land always seemed weird to me. The cost, logistics, reduced life of the installations, disruptions to the ecosystems and potential production issues with winter storms and other extreme weather events.

The empty land doesn't produce power, wind does, and offshore it's stronger and more reliable, and it's in a location near big demand. All of the environmental issues are considerations for any power plant. Offshore wind would have been better in many aspects than alternatives, and profitable.

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

#775

Post by jhoechtl »

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 sweet spot is representative democracy with a tendency of socialism, to mildly distribute welath and assure social coherence. A voting system which results in a division of force, representing the voters will.

The current US administration calls such things comunism.

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

#776

Post by jsiepkes »

WalterBright wrote: post #763
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...

> Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies. Consider the taxes on gasoline.

Since this is about energy; Power companies don't pay taxes on gas and diesel used in power plants.

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

#777

Post by perpetuallunch »

WillAdams wrote: post #167
jtbayly wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the winter in the North people are just supposed to freeze?

Supplement w/ geothermal?

Geothermal works in enough areas (geographies) for it to be an entertaining talking point in niche forums like this one.

But not much else.

Earth is an incredibly poor heat conductor, as evidenced by the fact that you don’t have to dig very far, maybe a foot or four, and it’s a fairly constant 14 degrees C, and yet the core is molten lava (rock) and has been that way for billions of years predominantly from latent heat from the planets formation.

So you have to be very careful with heat exchange, lest you exceed the ability of the earth to conduct heat through the rock surrounding the boreholes.

Drilling deep boreholes is difficult as the rock becomes more like plasticine as it approaches temperatures where usefully higher temperatures occur.

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

#778

Post by thraway3837 »

Just so that people are aware. From the article:

German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the US after reaching a $1.2bn (£892m) payout deal with President Donald Trump's Department of the Interior (DoI).

RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana.

They are not paying Germany to prevent a German firm from building offshore wind projects on German shores. They are paying so that the German firm does not do it on US shores.

Terrible either way, but I think a lot of comments here are simply commenting after reading only the terrible title.

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

#779

Post by amanaplanacanal »

colechristensen wrote: post #755
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming the people who aren't quite as good at politics for the actions of the people who actually won the last election and are fucking this country seems... Insane?

Yes. Their whole job is defending the republic and in the easiest to win election they succumbed to the ego of a bumbling old man and failed to lead on anything at all. Those fools couldn't sell bottled water in a desert. You absolutely can blame the goalie for failing to defend the goal.

Sounds like blaming the abolitionists for slavery. Or blaming the police for murder since they didn't prevent it.

Every terrible thing Trump does is really somebody else's fault.

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

#780

Post by pavlov »

gpm wrote: post #709
pavlov wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the Holy Roman Empire inherited the name but, as Voltaire said, "was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire"... And the Byzantine Empire shrunk greatly after the first few hundred years. Most of its life it was more like a Greek nation that sometimes managed to expand to control parts of the old empire.

> the Holy Roman Empire inherited the name Eh, inheritance implies the predecessor willed it to you upon death. In the case of the "Holy Roman Empire" the predecessor died 334 years earlier with no successor. This isn't a case of inheritance, it's a case of just making shit up. The "byzantine" empire did inherit the name though. They continuously used and claimed the name "roman" from when the roman empire split (and…

The Byzantine Empire was Greek. Heraclius changed the official language to Greek already in the 7th century because that’s what everyone spoke.

They kept calling themselves Romans, but they spoke, wrote, and governed in Greek.

Post reply on HN