Martha’s Vineyard residents are angry with the company installing the wind turbines just off their coast. We’ll tell you why in a minute.
But first, let’s revisit our January 2024 blog (Lipstick on a Pig). Under the Biden-Harris green deal, wind projects get sweetheart deals. First, wind projects are guaranteed high payments per kilowatt hour even though the electricity the turbines generate is unreliable. (This leaves coal and natural gas fired plants to serve as the workhorse, providing reliable electricity 24-7, at less favorable rates.) Second, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has waived bonding fees on offshore wind projects. The bonds would have provided funding to remove the turbines either at failure or end of life. Third, a little-known fact about offshore wind: the federal permit acknowledges the wind project will kill whales... and the permit allows that killing. Huh?
So let’s fast forward a few months and check in on the Martha’s Vineyard/Nantucket Island project. First, in July, one of the massive turbines “failed”. It didn’t just stop turning. A 351 foot blade shattered, creating what the Vineyard residents termed a “disaster”, with dangerous blade debris washing up on (and closing) several busy beaches in July.
Next, the turbines are lit up at night, ruining the Vineyard residents' nighttime view. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The lights (required by the FAA) on the 800’ tall towers were supposed to be operated by a radar system; the lights were supposed to come on only when the radar showed an airplane in the area. The Nantucket-based opposition group “ACK For Whales” (remember the whales?) expressed its frustration that the radar system was not yet operational. ACK for Whales said: “Vineyard Wind was operational prior to the blade explosion and the environmental disaster it caused, yet the project was operational without the requisite ADLS (radar system) and it seems no one is holding them accountable.”
But the story isn’t finished. GE Verona is the company installing the wind turbines. According to Reuters and other news outlets, GE Verona is expected to lose $300 million in the third quarter alone, and is now laying off 900 workers. It looks like the Vineyard residents are going to stay lit up for a while.
We don’t write about wind turbine problems with a sense of glee. If we want our children to be warm and fed, we need all forms of energy. We write about wind turbines, whales and government sweetheart deals to point out that EVERY source of energy has an impact on the environment. No energy source is “green”, and energy production needs a level playing field. It’s not OK to waive bonds for wind turbines, while imposing business-crushing bonds on oil and gas…and so on. We need to understand this before the idiotic “green” policies propel us to a true energy crisis.
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