Wind
I used to work with wind developer. He was religiously eating beans on toast during lunch.
Trump admin pays wind developers to quit, back fossil fuel projects
As the Iran war pushes up energy prices, the Trump administration is paying offshore wind developers to walk away from projects and invest instead in fossil fuel infrastructure. The US Department of the Interior (DoI) announced on Monday two "historic" agreements under which the firms behind the Bluepoint Wind and Golden State …
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 00:21 GMT drankinatty
"Unfortunately at high velocities wind turbines have to shut down to protect them from damage" ??
Controllable pitch technology has been incorporated since the beginning in modern wind-turbines. The only time full-feathering is required is in hurricane/tornado force wind conditions. Hardly a valid argument against wind-energy, or justification for abandoning projects that are underway.
The tragedy is it will take generations to recover from the intentional damage done by the current administration -- at a time when we have no more time to lose curbing our CO2 emissions.
It should also stand as a stark warning to all who currently enjoy or aspire for liberty and self-governance. Once the corruption-camel sneaks his nose under the edge of the tent -- you're already in big trouble. We need to re-dedicate ourselves to the shared values that bind us together. Truth, justice, honesty, integrity and a shared sense of purpose to ensure those are the qualities we require of our leaders.
Paying, with taxpayer dollars, for the abandonment of green-energy projects for the unexplained benefit of the fossil-fuel industry stands in antithesis to those values, and shows, without question, the corrosive effect dark-money has in politics.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 18:37 GMT Dan 55
Colombia summit
Seems odd that this wasn't mentioned in an article like this.
One the one hand there is one country bribing countries not to invest in renewables, on the other hand 50 countries realise renewables are a matter of national security and decide to move forward as fast as possible with them.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 19:39 GMT sured
Re: Colombia summit
National security is a bad example as the Strait of Hormuz is proving the exact opposite and I think Trump knows that, the timing cannot be coincidental here.
What I'm not clear on is why even bother with these renewable companies as they're not nor ever will be a threat to Aramxo, Exxon etc. and coal is not going anywhere in the US. Who really wants out... the renewable companies?
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 21:38 GMT Not Yb
Re: Colombia summit
It's not that the renewable companies want out. They wanted to build these things, and actually paid the US for the privilege (long-term leasing part of our ocean holdings).
Trump hates windmills (eg, wind farms), and has been against them ever since he couldn't stop them from being put up within sight of his overseas golf course. Trump wants them out, because he doesn't like how they look. Secondarily, he loves using US oil and gas to create energy in the US, despite any environmental issues (which are 'Somebody Else's Problem'™).
The wind companies would not build these things if they weren't profitable.
Complaints about 'taxpayer subsidies' will be ignored because pretty much every US energy source is subsidized in some fashion.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 06:50 GMT Tim99
Re: Colombia summit
Obviously nothing to do with the $1+ trillion a year profit from fossil fuels. IEA suggest (discount rate 6% of present value) over 5 years are STEPS (Stated Policies) profit loss ≈ US$340 billion.
NZE (Net Zero Emissions by 2050) profit loss ≈ US$940 billion. Suggesting Average annual profit loss (nominal) for STEPS of US$100 billion/yr and NZE US$370 billion/yr.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 19:05 GMT Dan 55
The US is also actively derailing a net zero shipping agreement
Historic climate shipping deal faces ‘real fight’ as talks restart
I hope this time countries are more immune to Trump's threats after most of his tariff toys were taken off him. Last year talks stalled because US negotiators threatened other countries' officials and their families.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 13:34 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: The US is also actively derailing a net zero shipping agreement
The free world (= Not the USA) could just refuse delivery from or service to dirty shipping.
That's kinda happening with sanctions, blockades and general economic suicide measures. A bit like 'dirty' fossil fuels that produce an awful lot of fertilisers as a by-product, and 'renewables' can't subsitute except at a massive cost. So Spring has sprung, farmers are planting.. and facing very high fertiliser costs, which means crop yields will be lower, food will become even more expensive, and inflation will carry on rising..
But such is politics.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 19:17 GMT glennsills@gmail.com
Trump was bribed to do this
According to an article in the NY Times
"During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump gathered oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago estate and promised them a powerful return on their investment if they raised $1 billion to help him retake the White House."
It also explains the Iranian war, along with he just generally does what Netanyahu tells him to do.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 21:39 GMT DS999
Re: Trump was bribed to do this
The Iran war has been a boon for US oil interests. It isn't costing them any more to produce a barrel of oil than it did a few months ago, but they are getting $40 per barrel more for it. They would love it if Hormuz is shut down for the rest of his term, i.e. the current status quo where Trump has put the US in a much worse strategic position than it was before he started his pointless war.
At least if it goes on long enough and we see $5 to $6 gas it'll help renewables far far more than any sort of government subsidies would by accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels for simple pocketbook reasons. Heck even Musk will like it as it might help the falling sales of his swasticars.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 05:15 GMT jake
Re: Trump was bribed to do this
If I had needed to fill up with store-bought gas(petrol) this afternoon, I would have paid $5.89/USgallon[0].
That's the lowest price gas in Sonoma County, California. Most stations are over $6.00 [1], [2]. Electric vehicles are not increasing in sales ... but many people are brewing their own ethanol and running their cars on that.
[0] https://www.gasbuddy.com/station/67466
[1] https://www.gasbuddy.com/station/76323
[2] https://www.gasbuddy.com/station/76321
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 04:56 GMT Neil Barnes
Re: So to deliver value to the US taxpayer....
Well, duh. Wind (indirectly) and solar energy are literally available for free (ignoring construction and other related costs, of course, but many of those, or similar, apply to carbon energy sources).
It seems that Mr Trump isn't smart enough to stick a bucket outside if it's raining soup.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 19:34 GMT Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck
Poor baby is really offended by windmills within view of shoreline golf courses.
What a self serving moron when you consider the very real threat of climate change.
But let me guess: the dullest tool in the shed thinks that climate change and carbon emissions being the cause is a conspiracy of some kind...
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 20:02 GMT Jellied Eel
But let me guess: the dullest tool in the shed thinks that climate change and carbon emissions being the cause is a conspiracy of some kind...
The dullest tools in the shed favour pre-Industrial technology, despite our ancestors giving that up once we'd developed more efficient, reliable power generation that didn't rely on batteries. But the scam works because people generally don't look at what lies (literally) behind crazy claims. Or wonder why countries like the UK and Germany that have made massive 'investments' into 'renewables' have very high energy costs and the corresponding industrial decline. So-
Globally, fossil fuel subsidies are typically much higher than those handed out to renewable energy projects. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fossil fuel subsidies exceeded $7 trillion in 2022, or 7.1 percent of global GDP.
This is only true when using fantasy econonomics-
https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies
Implicit subsidies occur when the retail price fails to include external costs, inclusive of the standard consumption tax. External costs include contributions to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, local health damages (primarily pre-mature deaths) through the release of harmful local pollutants like fine particulates, and traffic congestion and accident externalities associated with the use of road fuels.
Then a handy worked example that loads lots of costs onto a litre of petrol to turn a pump price of 30c/l to a 'socially optimum' price of $1.25 and thus plucking 95c in 'subsidies' out of their arse. But then climate cultists would prefer it if people never looked at the details. But the IMF fantasies are especially dumb, 15c in 'road accidents and congestion costs' and 30c in 'air pollution costs'. Which are only unique to ICE vehicles, apparently. EV's never crash or cause congestion. When they crash, they somehow don't make accidents more severe because EV's are as overweight as the typical rainbow-headed follower of Gaia. When they burn, they don't damage road surfaces, or take hours or sometimes days to extinguish, releasing toxic chemicals while they burn. And being overweight, EVs create more fine particulates via extra tyre and road dust.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 20:37 GMT IGotOut
"like the UK and Germany that have made massive 'investments' into 'renewables' have very high energy costs"
Let me educate you
"Why are electricity prices linked to gas?
The price of electricity is usually set by the price of gas-fired power plants in the UK, Italy and many other European markets.
This is due to the “marginal pricing” system used in most electricity markets globally.
......
As a result, whenever there is a spike in the cost of gas, electricity prices go up too."
The UK is aiming to break the link between gas and renewable energy.
You're welcome.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 21:23 GMT Jellied Eel
The price of electricity is usually set by the price of gas-fired power plants in the UK, Italy and many other European markets.
This is due to the “marginal pricing” system used in most electricity markets globally.
See? Lies and half-truths. So marginal pricing was a wizard wheeze where the most expensive generator sets the price. This was rigged to allow the most expensive generators (ie 'renewables') subsidies. Slight snag. Because of wind's intermittency, this increased the demand for gas to keep the lights on at night, or just when the wind isn't blowing. Then because the idea of warmth makes snowflakes melt, assorted 'sin taxes' were loaded onto gas to make that more expensive. And then our 'leaders' demonstrated their economic genius by sanctioning themselves from cheap Russian gas, blowing up pipelines and finally closing the Strait of Hormuz.
So a brilliant solution that means the people that created the problem, ie 'renewables' and their inherent intermittency also created a highly profitable solution. When gas sets the price, wind farmers get paid windfall profits, even though gas isn't an input cost for them. But given the collosal subsidies generated by 'renewables', it's unsuprising their lobbyists create so much garbage like the IMF's 'subsidies'. Regulatory capture. The grift that keeps on grifting.
The UK is aiming to break the link between gas and renewable energy.
The UK isn't trying very hard. It is muttering about removing or reducing some 'renewables' subsidies, but those don't go far enough to bring energy prices down. Especially not after new rounds of CfD auctions that still lock in inflated prices and windfalls. Again it should be obvious from the way 'investments' in 'renewables' have just inflated energy costs, prices and greatly reduced energy security. The situation is also unlikely to improve in the UK given if Starmer gets booted out, he might be replaced by Millibrain, the architect of the UK's economic destruction.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 10:40 GMT John Robson
" It is muttering about removing or reducing some 'renewables' subsidies,"
Ah yes - renewable subsidies... did you even read the article?
Renewables are far cheaper, and more secure, than fossil fuels.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, but it appears you'd try to use a steam roller rather than a knife.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 13:28 GMT Jellied Eel
Ah yes - renewable subsidies... did you even read the article?
Yes thanks. But clearly you did not. So again-
Globally, fossil fuel subsidies are typically much higher than those handed out to renewable energy projects. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fossil fuel subsidies exceeded $7 trillion in 2022, or 7.1 percent of global GDP. Meanwhile, G20 governments provided about $168 billion in public financial support for renewable power in 2023, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).
So it's a flawed premise because if you read the IMF report cited, those 'fossil fuel subsidies' are just fantasy 'social costs' that eco-freaks should be added to the cost of a litre of gas. And then the number is inflated by taxes added to pump prices, which is the reality. Fossil fuels are heavily taxed, not subsidised. Meanwhile, the $168bn is usually a real-cash subsidy that gets paid to the 'renewables' grifters. The comparison is further flawed by comparing IMF global 'subsidies' to G20 actual subsidies.
It's much like the way dodgy shopping channels work. Invent a number that you 'should pay', then slash the price to what you'll actually pay and create a fantasy saving. If mugs buy the stuff, they'll still end up paying a fat margin.
Renewables are far cheaper, and more secure, than fossil fuels.
No, they're really not, which is why our energy costs have rocketed since the lunatics took over the asylum and started building monuments to the sky gods. This-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
minimum: 0.579 GW maximum: 17.491 GW average: 7.77 GW
is the reality for the UK for the last month. Highly variable, and at the minimum, only enough to power a single, decent sized datacentre. 579MW vs a UK demand of around 32GW. So when the wind drops, we have to burn gas and/or pay through the nose for electricity via interconnectors.. Which also means the situation (and energy costs) for Ireland is much worse due to their combined reliance on 'renewables' and then having to import from via UK interconnectors.
And then the 'renewables' scumbags use more fake data, ie the last UK CfD round had bids of around $65/MWh for regular offshore wind, rising to £155/MWh for floating windmills. If the UK market was realistic, those bids would be based on energy, rather than theoretical power. So bids should be for say, 500MWh/month increments for good delivery. If the wind doesn't blow, then bidders would have to make up the difference, and the price would have to include the bidder's costs of finding & funding any shortfall via CCGT, interconnecters, batteries or unicorn farts.
Instead, all those costs gets socialised and loaded onto our energy bills. But that intermittency is why our energy costs are so high, along with all the infrastructure costs that are loaded onto our bills to subsidise wind farmer's windfall profits.. and they're currently unavoidable thanks to policy and rigged markets. The more 'renewables' we add, the more backup or stand-by capacity we also need to add, but the 'renewables' lobby doesn't count those costs, because if they did, the massive costs and inefficiences would be obvious to more people.
And then there's security.. We have to import 'renewables', so they're as vulnerable to any trade war stuff or supply chain disruption as any other import. Then there's the 'global warming' risks. Those predict more 'extreme weather', and get damaged or destroyed by storms, tornados, hail etc etc. Nuclear, coal & gas are far, far less vulnerable to those weather 'extremes'. But for the UK, also another risk given average wind speeds have been falling.
Germany has kinda, sorta woken up to the problem of 'energiewende' and is building coal power stations, because they have coal when they don't have wind or sun. But then Germany also has a coalition government that frequently relies on their Greens, hence 'energiewende' in the first place. But they're also proposing the traditional German inter-war pastime of rearmament, which means they're going to need a lot of energy, which they've made scarcer and very expensive.
Ah, politics..
There is more than one way to skin a cat, but it appears you'd try to use a steam roller rather than a knife.
Nope, for steam generation, I'd much prefer a nuclear kettle. But our neo-Luddites are still stuck firmly in the past and want to rely on pre-Industrial windmills, even though our ancestors obsoleted those. They understood the disadvantages, even though our 'leaders' haven't quite caught up with the 21st Century. If they had to sail to all their jollies, the penny might finally drop. But instead, they fly, even though their policies are making it more expensive for the peasents (and businesses) to do the same.
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Tuesday 28th April 2026 21:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
One year after Spain’s blackout, its shift to renewables and grid evolution power on
In the intervening months since the blackout, a devastating conflict has broken out in the Middle East, and the closure of the strait of Hormuz has sent gas prices steeply upwards. But Spain has been relatively protected compared with other countries because of its existing investment in renewable energy. Jan Rosenow, a professor of energy and climate policy at the University of Oxford, said, “wholesale electricity prices would have been 40% higher in the first half of 2024 without the wind and solar growth of recent years”.
In 2025, gas was framed as saving the grid from renewables. But in 2026, renewable energy is protecting consumers from the acute impacts of gas. Rosslowe said: “Spain’s average power prices in March (€43 per MWh) were the third lowest in Europe, after Finland and Portugal, twice as low as Germany (€99 per MWh) and three times as low as Italy (€144 per MWh). That’s because of the weakened link between Spanish electricity and gas prices.”
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 00:32 GMT Jellied Eel
China has world's largest fleet of both solar power and wind farms. Why is China exempt from your "analysis"?
Because the topic isn't China, but why the US wants to avoid the economic problems Germany and the UK has created? But China is interesting-
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/
Only 8c per kWh vs 40c for Germany and the UK. The US is already facing rising energy costs, causing economic and political problems. Orsted already pulled out of some US offshore wind projects because they were unaffordable without higher subsidies. Yet despite all the evidence for higher costs, the 'renewables' lobby still relies on lies like the IMF's fantasy 'subsidies' to try and flog more windmills.
It also continues to puzzle me that IT-types don't understand the fundamental problems with 'renewables'. Try powering a 500MW datacentre purely off 'renewables' and it just doesn't work due to the intermittency, and would be massively more expensive than just burning gas, coal or better yet, uranium.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 00:38 GMT Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck
You won't be able to cool off with the money you gained in the short term when average temperatures climb into the triple digits because excessive carbon emissions kept on pushing climate change to worse and worse extremes.
But people like you and Trump can't think in terms of anything but dollars.
You really are pathetically simple minded and simply motivated to have money as your overriding concern over survival of not just our but future generations.
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Thursday 30th April 2026 16:19 GMT Jellied Eel
As we have a privatised energy supply chain there is little connection between investment in cheap energy sources (ie. Costs) and the prices consumers pay.
But we don't, we have a highly regulated energy supply chain that thanks to regulatory capture, has privatised the profits and socialised the costs. This why our energy costs are so much higher than say, China. Ok, so China does subsidise domestic energy prices, but they know that affordable energy is a social good. We in the developed West aren't so fortunate, so there's been extensive and expensive lobbying for this garbage-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal
and regulatory capture. Don't build new nuclear, or modern coal power, build primitive windmills that our ancestors obsoleted when steam power came along. The US 'renewables' lobby found a useful idiot in Biden, who autosigned the ironically named Inflation Reduction Act. This promised $783 billion for 'energy and climate change', which could have built a lot of new nuclear. Instead, it went towards windmills and a couple of EV charging points. Now that regulatory capture is slowly being corrected, the scumbags that profit from wind & subsidy farming aren't happy.
It's much like the UK and our insane 'Net Zero' policy. Nobody in charge seems to have stopped to think that despite the policy costing trillions.. it achieves nothing wrt climate, UK or 'global' temperatures. Especially as the Met Office can't accurately or reliably measure temperatures anyway, and certainly not enough to detect the changes that Net Zero might produce anyway.
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Thursday 30th April 2026 16:27 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Cope
Maybe learn what Climate is before commenting something quite so stupid?
Oh, I know this one!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification
Or, in the context of religion and having a bunch of Knuts in charge, it's about proving our 'leaders' really can fight the tides.. If we let them spend enough of our money. So that 'climate' is just 30 year chunks of average weather. Which can't be measured accurately, and we don't know what the weather was actually like say, 1650-1680. Or some soothsayers think they know, because they think trees act as accurate thermometers.
Any sane, rational person would know that that idea is just bollocks. But sadly many people think it true, and because trees, the MWP, LIA etc didn't happen. But your money will be thrown into the wind anyway, and thanks to regulatory capture, we can't stop it. At least not until Millibrain & Co are booted out of office.
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 05:29 GMT jake
One wonders why ...
,,, trump's ass kissers and boot lickers in Texas haven't explained to their lord and god sitting in the oval office just exactly how much wind power currently runs the state?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-TEX-ERCO/live/fifteen_minutes
I'd use California as a better example for renewables, but trump hates California. Besides Texas seems to be a bigger wind generator than California. Whodathunkit.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fifteen_minutes
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 14:18 GMT DrSunshine0104
Ah yes. I love my tax money going to pay (twice, if there were incentives) for infrastructure that just does nothing. Shutting something like this down is usually more costly than actually completing it.
If there were environmental hazards, those companies did the minimum to secure them and they'll be a disaster in future. The economic cost to the surrounding communities that now have hazards in the water without the obvious turbine attached. Towns that had hundreds of workers suddenly gone over-night because the company just shutdown operations.
So instead of just letting the project complete, at cost that is certainly lower than what they paid them to quit and allow the community to get the benefits, just burn that money, baby. Government efficiency at its best...
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Wednesday 29th April 2026 16:40 GMT Jellied Eel
So instead of just letting the project complete, at cost that is certainly lower than what they paid them to quit and allow the community to get the benefits, just burn that money, baby. Government efficiency at its best...
The alternative can also be true, and is very much true in Europe. So-
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/ofgem-approves-initial-ps24-billion-operate-and-maintain-critical-gas-networks-and-upgrade-britains-electricity-supergrid
Ofgem has today (1 July) given the provisional green light to an initial £24bn investment programme to enhance energy security while enabling the transmission of more clean energy from renewable sources.
So UK energy users are forced to pay for occasional electricity generators, the stand-by capacity for when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing... And now an intial £24bn 'investment' to stop the grid collapsing. This £24bn will just get loaded onto our energy bills to enable windall profits to subsidy farmers. The 'investment' will also generate fat profits for the infrastructure providers and managers. So the US can avoid those costs by just buying out the contracts and building proper power stations instead.
On which point-
https://blog.cfs.energy/our-sparc-fusion-facility-is-now-about-75-done-take-a-virtual-tour-of-the-progress/
A 21st Century clean power project that's edging closer to completion and ignition, with private funding rather than public. So assuming they can make it work, a much better investment than trying to plug in thousands of pre-Industrial windmills.
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Thursday 30th April 2026 07:20 GMT Kris Sweeney
Of course they dont want to fund renewable energy, the problem with renewable is that it's not likely to run out, it's er renewable.
They could fund wind, solar and tidal projects and accept a decent ROI but why go for decent when you can incentivise corrupt politicians to force the use of a dwindling resource that's only going to increase in value as it's availability drops, your ROI would be obscene, if you can also cause a global crisis linked to said resource you can (if you forgive the oxymoron) clean up.
Trump and his buddies are forcing the US dependency on fossil fuels that pollute the air and water, cause massive amounts of visible and hidden damage, fracking can turn our ground water toxic, mining can result in sinkholes and scars on the landscape, this comes with costs to the public that will be felt for generations, all in the name of truly obscene profits now, to live like modern kings, disconnected from the rest of society struggling from one paycheck to another, if work is available because these oligarchs are replacing their workers with machines and computers, if every opportunity to replace a human that needs to be trained, that can take sick or leave for another job, is greedily seized upon with no thought to the future, if a livable wage is unattainable, if no one is hiring, if everyone is being laid off for next shiny bit of automation, who is going to buy their products, afford their oil, pay for their next bonus?
