OilPrice.com, which reported a month ago on Aug. 3, that there is a “financial crisis developing in offshore wind energy"—taking from Bloomberg News that the cost of carrying out projects had risen by an average 57% in two years—now runs a report by (Zero Hedge)[https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/Orsted-Threatens-To-Abandon-US-Offshore-Wind-Projects.html#:~:text=] on Sept. 9 that Ørsted Energy, the world’s biggest wind turbine producer, wants to drop its U.S. East Coast projects unless the Biden Administration grants it aid one could only call “Ukraine-style.”
Here are projects recently cancelled by Ørsted and others, totaling about 3.5 GW of rated power capacity:
Spanish utility Iberdrola SA cancelled a wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, paying $48.9 million in fines; Ørsted withdrew a bid to produce offshore wind power in Rhode Island waters; Swedish utility Vattenfall AB cancelled a planned wind farm off the shore of the U.K. One-third of the rest of the projects under Biden’s “30 GW by 2030” plan for offshore wind are “in dispute” according to Clearview Analytics. Ørsted is threatening to walk away from all its projects, according to the underlying Bloomberg News report, unless the Biden Administration gives it bigger subsidies than the already-in-place tax credits of 30% or more, and guarantees those subsidies without imposing the domestic content requirement on Ørsted, which is supposedly the basis for the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies!
