alt Hacker NewsUS strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects
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I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire and it was fascinating how eerily similar it was to the current state of the US. Overwhelmed by corruption and wars they make stupider and stupider decisions on ever larger scales, ever more frequently. And the population grows ever more cynical, eventually opting for authoritarianism before eventually the center can't hold any more and it all collapses in on itself.
Funnily enough, the most striking part was the pure stupidity of a lot of it - seems so strange, but every day it seems I hear another really stupid story and think ... huh, maybe it really can be like that.
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.
Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas.
The demand for energy is higher than ever due to AI data centers, but I guess the next model is more important than a habitable environment.
Insane.
Over the last year, wind - mostly offshore - has generated more than 35% of electricity here. Gas is down to 27%. It's really, really good. And it looks cool.
Meanwhile China is becoming entirely energy independent and electrifying their economy. I don't understand how the US doesn't see that they won't be top dog forever especially in this multipolar age.
Fascinating how a country can dismantle itself. Historians will have a field trip in analyzing this. Just sad that the current population will suffer from this.
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.
Hopefully they take the money and use to to build more wind turbines in Europe I guess.
Absolutely shameful what the USA has become.
This is beyond my understanding. They are actually paying to stop society from advancing.
I wish I had not read this. I am not kidding when I say this is ruining my day thinking about. One thing is they ruin our times. But they are in the game of ruining the rest of time for humankind, too.
Quick! Back to the other thread! I've spotted somewhere DOGE could recoup $1.2B
Can I also threaten to build an offshore wind project if they don't pay me $1.2 billion?
Rolling out data centers all over the place and they're paying billions for LESS energy supply.
Geniuses.
> 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".
Isn't the $1.2B deal a subsidy for conventional gas?
Just a hypothetical...
Building new infra will extend beyond trumps term, so it's possible they do "planning" for 2 years, new admin comes in, and they abandon the plan and go back to putting the money in wind.
Also,
> The administration signed a similar $129bn (£96bn) agreement with Charlotte-based Duke Energy last month in exchange for the termination of the company's offshore wind lease in the Carolina Long Bay area.
Where is this money coming from? They can strike a deal, but the money has to come from somewhere and if it came from money directed at wind energy, then this will be illegal, I'd venture to guess.
In my opinion, it was always crazy to build a wind farm in the most scenic part of the Pacific coast.
The neo-industrialist in me thinks it would have been cool to see that driving the 1.
But you can hardly call dredging and filling all that open ocean habitat conservationist.
I have either learned to tune it all out or have been worn down of all the terrible news. But of all the terriblew news to come from this administration, this kind of thing guts me the most :(
There is really no way around this, no silver lining. After years of working to get these programs implemented, to have the admin just willy-nilly spend money (what money!?!) to have them STOP. It hurts man.
I can't believe how stupid the world has become. At least my young niece and nephew will have terrible air to breathe after I'm gone. Next, let's pay people to detonate nuclear bombs next to our homes.
I am available to not build wind turbines at a substantial discount.
You would think that the US would be all for energy that reduces its reliance on the far east, regardless of the climate change benefit
It's really depressing to know my own taxes are going to shit like this and feel so helpless to stop it.
Energy lobby in the USA is incredible. Maybe the best one? They have direct power too
RWE is the biggest producer of energy from lignite in Germany, which causes massive emissions even when compared to burning black coal, oil and gas. Lignite used to be really important for Germany because it has almost no reserves of oil and gas that can be accessed with traditional methods, but Germany has huge natural gas reserves that can be accessed with hydraulic fracturing. Of course, fracking is illegal in Germany, so we keep burning lignite instead, which is so much worse. Mind you, I'm not arguing that fracking is the future, we need to decarbonize the entire energy sector, but we could do so much better with the cards that we were dealt.
So the lignite-burning energy dinosaur from Germany accepting a billion dollar bribe to divest resources from clean energy into fossil fuels is totally in character for that company. Shame on them.
Wait halting energy projects when energy is so scares for data centers? Couldn't US just have handed it over to some US Big Tech? I am not in US but why pay to "not" do something like building infra.
If you are in the US make sure you write your congressman about this. Elections are coming up in a couple months and if they see this as an issue they will ensure something happens. There is already suspicion that the Democrats will win the house (which doesn't take too many districts to turn - this commonly would happen anyway), even a republican in a "safe seat" is scared.
I wonder how Americans feel to see that their elected president takes tax money to forcefully destroy the planet and our kid's future :-(
Is the policy now to "harvest whatever we can ASAP" without any regard or consideration for the future or the environment?
"RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana."
"Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels after campaigning for the presidency under the slogan "drill, baby, drill"."
That's insane, even though half of Republican supporters believe in climate change, and almost all Democratic voters do too. I can understand cutting government spending on the transition to green energy when projects are unprofitable, but what is the point of cutting it for profitable ones? If I'm not mistaken, energy firms like RWE are even threatened with lawsuits if they continue building wind turbines. Other coal investments are even more insane.
This is so colossally stupid, even by MAGA standards. We're literally spending billions to make things worse, because apparently any form of renewable energy makes the frogs gay or some stupid shit.
We need to be careful in not throwing the babies out with the bath water - the fees paid for the leases for these projects were so high that the projects would not be economically viable in the first place. The developers are probably doing back flips behind closed doors that they have exited these positions without major financial impairments.
This does not mean that renewables or offshore wind should not be built it just means that the regime around how sites are awarded, and how power purchase contracts are made need to be reworked.
A lot of the world is struggling with this (recently UK re-tendered for Mona lease area with much more favourable conditions than r4 initial lease).
Generally speaking I think the best approach would be to have almost zero / nominal lease fee, then have a competitive auction around a two sided CFD - if the market price is below the strike price the state makes up the difference, if the market price is above the strike price the excess goes back to the state.
Is there any way to view our consistent destruction of green energy products in the last few years as anything other than hostile towards the majority of people purely to have a handful of people profit on cost of gas?
> "We welcome RWE's agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation's energy security,".
We do live in a dystopia don't we?
We found trump's achilles heel. I demand a trillion to shut down my solar
everyone on this board - is now aware the US gvt is working against your interest unless you're sama & crew.
invest in your own solar, or other forms of renewable energy - get an ev.
This is, I suppose, what you get when you elect a guy who went bust running a casino. So much winning.
At least we finally answered the Mad Max question "Who killed the world?"
In case anyone is wondering why he hates wind so much, it stared in 2011:
Donald Trump pledges 'any legal means' fight against windfarm. US tycoon saying proposed offshire turbines will 'compromise' golf resort – and ruin his sea view: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/05/donald-trump-l...
Donald Trump continues to battle Scottish offshore windfarm plans. In his second letter to Alex Salmond, the businessman said the turbines would have a negative impact on Scottish tourism: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/28/donald-t...
You can't make this ish up. In the era of AI when we need as much energy as possible, this admin is pulling this ridiculous stunt. Yeah, I'm not wagering that USA wins the AI race.
> Days after his return to office, he said "we're not going to do the wind thing" and called them "big, ugly windmills" that were dangerous to wildlife.
And coal?
Great article for April 1st! No, wait. It's August 7th. Wat.
They bought back the leases; how much did the lease cost originally, and how much work was done on the project? Those are the only important questions
2028, everyone. Hang in there.
I thought I misread the title at first. I assume we're going to pay labs to stop doing cancer research next?
Beyond idiocy.
> 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?