The US Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently designated
two Wind Energy Areas in deepwater areas off the Oregon coast. BOEM is also reviewing offshore wind energy development options for the Gulf of Maine, Central Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and maybe Great Lakes.
They’re part of Team Biden’s plan to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030
and 15,000 MW of
floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035. Capacity is what the turbines
could generate, when the wind is blowing at optimal speeds, perhaps 30-40 percent of the year.
30,000 MW is what 2,500 12-MW turbines
could generate. It’s enough to meet New York State’s
current peak electricity needs on a hot summer day. Add the electricity required to replace gasoline cars and natural gas furnaces and stoves, meet surging AI, data center and streaming video demands, and charge grid-scale backup batteries – and New York alone would likely need
10,000 12-MW offshore turbines.
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It’s almost as though these government officials actually believe they can solve the alleged climate crisis by simply issuing proclamations, regulations, pictures, press releases and subsidies – and Voila!
Mines open, raw materials materialize, and millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of vehicle and grid-scale batteries, millions of miles of transmission lines, millions of transformers and other technologies get manufactured and installed – with no fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic air and water pollutants, child and slave labor, or other evils (all at minimal cost), while
endangered species and other environmental conflicts disappear (or are relegated to irrelevance) ... and cornucopias of clean, renewable, reliable, affordable electricity are rapidly generated worldwide.
It’s impolite to question fervently held beliefs in fossil-fuel-free utopias. However, a little reality is urgently needed before activists and bureaucrats take us any further down this primrose path.