alt Hacker NewsUS strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects
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Anti wind farm rethoric is common among pro-Russian politicians in Bulgaria too.
At what point is the correct response to just stop paying federal taxes?
I conducted a fun experiment.
Prompted an AI this:
It's year 2005, and you're an AI on an alien planet. you get a piece of news from the future from a planet called Earth. Tell me what you understand from the text and what you think about it: (then pasted the article text)
Take that $1.2bn. Invest it. When this moronic administration is gone, use it to build more renewable energy infrastructure.
Offshore wind kills the jet stream and creates climate change.
2028, everyone. Hang in there.
Do they hate green energy that much?
Why does Doug Burgum need to underscore the fact that the RWE investment is 'voluntary'?
Big Oil getting what they paid for.
Clown administration, there is nothing else to say. It’s completely captured by grifters at that point
did the onion just take over the BBC, what's going on right now ?
Beyond idiocy.
Man - What exactly are these people?
take a look at what Spain is doing. diversifying the energy system is needed
Punishment for US will continue until more jail improves.
so as my energy bill is going up 50% we're giving people my tax dollars in exchange for them not making more energy to ease demand?
winning winning winning winning winning winning winning winning
How much wind power can we extract before we disrupt the global wind circulation and thus the climate regulation by winds?
Is no one worried about this?
Ha, been there
If they want to pay me to not build wind farms, I'll not build them for half that.
what will replace the wind projects?
It's just so blatantly and absurdly evil for literally no reason. It's a cartoon villain type of plan, the absurdity of it leaves me at a true loss for words
Idiot president of a country where over 10% of power generated in 2025 was with wind says any country with wind turbines (he calls them windmills) is a loser country. Film at 11.
Why are they scared shitless of wind power? What's the deal? I don't get it. Like, they seem to be more determined to stop wind power than solar power. Why?
The US continues to cede the energy revolution to China.
Can't have wind power. Can't have bike lanes. Can't have trains. Can't have healthcare. Love this country!
To be clear, this isn’t wind power currently under construction. It’s proposed future wind power with leases being planned. Trump has largely failed to stop the nearly complete projects in New England, New York, and Virginia.
Still short sighted and stupid, of course.
"US strikes..."
Oh God, what now, we've finally bombed Cuba?
"...$1.2B deal to pay..."
Oh thank God!
"...halt offshore wind projects"
God damn it.
We are outraged. We know we are nearly the climate abyss. We see the changes all around us. What are we going to do to collectively to change course? To right the ship?
I wrote a book on the issue. I think the next best thing we can do is work together to amplify our voices to the point ignoring us is no longer politically convenient.
As a German I am highly confused by US actions. America is sabotaging its own economic future, demonizing independent renewable natural energy sources (you don’t need to import wind or sun) and Mr. „art of the deal“ is even paying us for it.
Offshore wind projects when you have tons and tons of empty land always seemed weird to me. The cost, logistics, reduced life of the installations, disruptions to the ecosystems and potential production issues with winter storms and other extreme weather events.
So in short a company was servicing power demand in a low pollution way. Then American government gave them money so they can instead service the same demand while causing more pollution.
Just... Why? To protect a few hundred jobs in America? They could have just given a small portion of that money to these workers and they would stop complaining about job loss. 1.2 Billion is a big number.
Every single day it's getting stupider and stupider with the NewUSA
Leave to the idiot cheato to be #1!
Nobody else ever spent this much money to NOT have cheap power 8-/
Barf
Dumb, Dumb Dumb….
my guess is that this project will be quickly relocated somewhere else in a double loose for the US, but then may very well prove to illegal in any number of violations of US law, triggering further confusion and unplanned costs for US tax payers. it's a triumphalist celebration of anti logic
this is the stupidest thing ever. literally this administration cancels the contract and compensates german company... omg
Literally setting fire to the world because the US government is rammed full of corruption and oil cronies. Meanwhile everything is fine for the handful of billionaires who benefit from this shit. Absolutely sickening.
The next time, your libertarian friend mutters “Solyndra”, tell him at the most Solyndra cost the federal government 1/2 billion dollars, not the many billions Trump is spending to cancel wind projects.
The challenge is that you're not dealing with rational people. The big dog in the White House is a imbecile of the highest order, and everyone is doing everything in their power to appease him. It is a unwinnable situation as long as Trump is POTUS.
November can't come soon enough, this administration is beyond disgusting
They are literally a non-stop crime-spree against humanity
But if the Dems don't get 52 in the Senate absolutely nothing will change and might get even worse, likely much worse
One of my guiltier pleasures is reading r/Conservative to see which knots they're tying themselves in today defending some of his more insance ideas. In the unlikely event this surfaces up beyond some rage-bait culture war story they've found on Breitbart, I will enjoy reading their thoughts on why this is 4d chess†
†: in fairness to them, they are almost uniformly opposed to Trump's adventurism in Iran and mostly not supportive of the Jan 7th slush-fund, and will call out both when pressed
The madness continues. No one else is to blame other than the american zeros who made this hell to continue this long.
is it just me or does that seems to be a decision driven fully by a personal dislike of wind energy without having actually run the numbers, or in other words the art of a deal isn't that
like yes there was binding commitment to RWE getting some level of subsidies, hence he had to "pay them of" around the amount of profit they have likely list, and probably more
but... compared to not paying that much more in subsidies _and_ getting more electricity out of it which the US seem to currently be quite tight one this seems to be a terrible bad deal
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EDIT: Sorry for the rant below, it's just pretty annoying how dishonest non fact based politics has been becoming where I live:
furthermore you can stop future subsidies, so if wind energy is as "fake" as he claims this is something RWE would be stuck with not them, even if it drive them bankrupt it wouldn't be a USA problem (and more a German one)
so the only way this deal makes sense is if you a) hate wind energy and want it cone irrationally b) know it actually works and as such would "stay around" for sure (or if you really really really care about birds, no way this is true for Trump)
(And also practically it already has proven that off shore wind farms can work profitable, so b, isn't really a question. But I guess if you have a president who says all the wind farms in China are fake for show while China produce roughly as much wind energy as all of the EU together then sure you can't except logic).
In general the amount of nonsense you hear when it comes to the topic of renewable energies is pretty crazy both in how people "proof how bad it is" .. based on early technology from well over 20+ years ago, systematically ignoring relevant components of a complete solution, pretending certain already in-use technologies don't exist and don't make sense etc. To ignoring issues with whatever technology they favor and often comparing wrongly calculated "non subsidized" renewable prices with "highly subsidized" non renewable prices. Don't get me wrong it also is done the other way around. But at least where I live, that direction of propaganda isn't really relevantly used while the other direction is spread everywhere non stop (while also pretending that any honest calculation is supposedly "faked" because it doesn't fit their world view).
Now people understand why Merz is so obedient to Trump: USA always pays Germany handsomely. Canadians understood Trump being a problem. German taxpayers also understand this. It is german politicians who consistently act against the people in Germany here; Merz is just doing this very shamelessly and obviously, while also insulting germans as "lazy bums" (https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/friedrich-me... - here he claims to never have insulted Germans as that, but prior statements contradict this). There is a reason why more than 70% (!!!!) of germans oppose Merz now. https://ip-quarterly.com/en/troubled-merz-faces-crucial-elec...
Being so obedient to Mr. Trump, who in turn now faces allegation of being more involved than was previously already known with regards to Epstein's sexy islands, is a lose-lose situation Mr. Merz. USA paying german companies to abandon green energy plans, also ties into that. If Merz would have something called a spine he would not be so addicted to the money and instead reject the USA trying to influence Europeans and Germans negatively here. Because that money is ultimately bribery money for RWE. Shame on RWE as well.
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Can the US please keep their bad decisions within their borders...