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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

#701

Post by amanaplanacanal »

lesuorac wrote: post #642
nozzlegear wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People didn't vote against Biden/Harris, they voted against incumbents in almost every major election across the world. They were unhappy with the economic situation after Covid – Biden just happened to be president at the time. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-hate-inflation-more-...

Not just that but they voted significantly more against the incumbent in the rest of the world than the US. People really did not like Trump they just didn't like incumbents more. It's almost like if the Democrats ran a competitive primary this whole situation could've been avoided.

Somebody would have had to convince Biden not to run. I honestly don't know if anybody even tried.

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

#702

Post by throw0101d »

bluGill wrote: post #489
throw0101d wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. Parts of the US are literally on fire. * https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100... * https://wfca.com/fire-map * https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps

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.

[dead]

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

#703

Post by mrits »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #436
mrits wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen one here, which makes sense because we don't use much coal. I suppose if they were 200m high and scattered across half the state I'd have a similar opinion.

Texas burns more coal than any other state and has hundreds of premature deaths a year caused by its coal plants.

Europe burns 10x what Texas does. Is this how we think?

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

#704

Post by amanaplanacanal »

marcyb5st wrote: post #176
bsenftner wrote: post #63

The USA is governed by evil people, and the people of the nation are too stupid and expecting someone else to stop them. Plain as day light.

Honestly, despite having a wife from the US (not an US citizen anymore), I agree with you. It is really weird to me that such a thing as lobbying can be legal. Or the fact that you can donate to an election campaign so that they have more money to influence people. And it is even more surprising that the vast majority of US people don't even question these things. I have the theory that American exceptionalism hinder…

A lot of people question them. But the supreme Court has decided that giving money is equivalent to free speech, and can't be touched. I don't know how we will ever get out of that problem.

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

#705

Post by nicoburns »

perpetuallunch wrote: post #672
nicoburns wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading from Europe where we get told "gas" is the big bad, even threatening to make condensing gas boilers illegal from time to time Long-term this is true, and it makes sense to ban gas boilers (potentially with some exceptions): electric heat is significantly more efficient, and can run on renewable energy. But that requires a big investment in infrastructure build-out (heat pumps) which will take decades, and w…

> and we definitely need to be careful that we handle the transition without screwing people over. Well we’re certifiably not going that . No need to wait decades to look at the recent data. London can’t even work out how to properly ventilate their underground rail network. The solution is obvious: built nuclear power and refrigeration (heat pumps). Where it’s too cold either nuclear and heat pumps and / or district…

> Well we’re certifiably not doing that.

Don't disagree with you there.

> London can’t even work out how to properly ventilate their underground rail network.

This seems unrelated. It's not an energy problem: it's a problem with lack of space in the tunnels and lack of places to build ventilation shafts due to the issue not being considered 100 years ago when the tunnels were built.

> Or people can melt in the summers and freeze in the winters. Because that is exactly what “renewables” have been delivering.

I think this has very little to do with renewables. In particular, solar is perfect for reducing "melt in summer" cases (it's almost always sunny when it's hot) (and I'm not sure where has freeze in winter problems).

The issue seems to be more that weather has gotten hotter, and infrastructure needs to change in response to that (inevitably slow and expensive).

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

#706

Post by TitaRusell »

rayiner wrote: post #68
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?

It's even dumber than that. Someone built a wind farm near Trump's golf course in Scotland and now he hates wind farms: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo . He thinks they're ugly and noisy.

I would actually miss the windturbines they have become a part of the landscape. Besides oil refineries are hardly pretty either.

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

#707

Post by radu_floricica »

Situation is quite different than the article paints it. The venture was risky to begin with, and already dead in 2026. Subsidies are gone, GE didn't produce their new 18MW turbine, interest rates and construction costs went up etc. State bureaucracy is its own quagmire, the fact that federal admin turned hostile was just the cherry on top.

Current deal is pretty clean and a win for both parties. US gov won't be drawn into a lengthy trial, RWE gets their money back, US gets a similar value investment, RWE gets a safer investment and a likely friendly government. US made some 40mil from the deal, or more likely 1-200 mil considering inflation; on the other hand RWE didn't lose their whole investment.

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

#708

Post by perpetuallunch »

namdnay wrote: post #618
ricardobayes wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, most households don't have the 25-30k available to switch to heat pumps. If we dig deep I think we partially solved why people don't have kids anymore in Europe: for that you need optimism, and to be told every few years even something basic as your heating system is due to be illegal (!) doesn't really fill people with optimism. Same thing with banning internal combustion engined-cars, which was reversed too...…

Where are you getting 25-30k from? A standard split that can handle 25m2 is 1-2k, with one in each bedroom you’re fine

The people who need heat pumps the most don’t have $6000+ to blow on heat pumps.

So now we’re back to government subsidies, which routinely prove to drive up the price of whatever is being subsidised, especially at the scale of residential homes.

And your solution still results in the living room / dining room and other shared spaces being inhospitable in winter / summer, so you’ve underestimated the cost at least significantly.

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

#709

Post by gpm »

pavlov wrote: post #651
arethuza wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 called both halves roman) right up until 1453, even their language was called romaic. That we don't refer to them as roman to this day is really a strange success of propaganda.

> And the Byzantine Empire shrunk greatly after the first few hundred years.

Which by itself sort of contradicts the claim that empires historically fall quickly? The roman empire began in 27 and in 565 it controlled almost the entire Mediterranean. Sure a few hundred years after the split (which itself is a few hundred years after the beginning of being an empire) it shrank but that's a long time.

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

#710

Post by [deleted] »

cycomanic wrote: post #548
friendzis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly , anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. Solar+storage requires massive overprovisioning, to the level that it's cheaper to burn literal money. Windmill farm outputs tend to dip during summer and peak over winter. With a given minimum power output windmills + photovoltaics…

> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. Solar+storage requires massive overprovisioning, to the level that it's cheaper to burn literal money. Citation needed

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