On the energy front, it seems the Biden Administration, like a poor marksman, just keeps missing the target. And sometimes, like today, the timing is nothing if not entertaining.
Shot:
"Under President Biden’s leadership, the American offshore wind industry is continuing to expand rapidly — creating good-paying union jobs across the manufacturing, shipbuilding and construction sectors," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said on Nov. 21 after green-lighting Empire Wind 2. "Today’s approval of the sixth offshore wind project adds to the significant progress towards our Administration’s clean energy goals."
Chaser:
Global energy developers Equinor and BP announced Wednesday they are canceling the contract for a massive wind project slated for construction off the coast of New York.
The two companies said they had reached an agreement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to terminate the offshore wind renewable energy certificate for their Empire Wind 2 project. Equinor and BP explained that commercial conditions, namely inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions, prevented its contract for the project from remaining viable.
Did you get that? It's not viable. As in, it won't deliver electricity in enough volume, with enough reliability, at the right times to show a profit - or to be more cost-effective than natural gas, nuclear energy, or even coal-fired plants. Without commercial viability, this wind farm can't and shouldn't be built.
Here's what the Biden Administration has for goals on this issue:
In 2021, Biden outlined goals to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, the most ambitious goal of its kind worldwide. That same year, his administration approved the Vineyard Wind and Southfork Wind project, the first two large-scale offshore wind projects approved in U.S. history.
Congress is pushing back on the Biden Administration's various climate initiatives; it's nice to see some semblance of sanity in Washington every now and then.
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Let's set aside, just for a moment, the scientific aspects of this. Let's set aside that wind and solar power, barring some impossible-to-predict technological breakthroughs, will never be able to replace the coal/natural gas/nuclear triad for electrical generation. Let's set aside how many other products, from electronics to pharmaceuticals, depend on petroleum for raw materials and precursors. All of that - just set it aside for the moment, and look at this document.
Now then, here, from that document, is the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Energy policy is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution. The Department of Energy has no constitutional justification to even exist, much less to be dictating energy policy to the country, climate notwithstanding.
That's not an argument that's going anywhere, unfortunately. Restricting the federal government back to its original constitutional structure would take Washington back to what it was in about 1800, maybe 1790, and as great as that would be, it's not on the list of things we can realistically hope for. That's too bad, but it's true, and unlike our friends on the left, we gain nothing by denying reality.
What we can hope for is some return to sanity on this matter. The climate, which I remind you has been changing for 4.5 billion years now, is going to go on changing, no matter how many people lose their conkers over it, and the crying of climate doomsayers aside, we have no authority to determine Earth's "correct" temperature.
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And believe me, conkers are doubtless being lost over this wind farm cancellation.
That is the one good thing to come out of this debacle: Reality was acknowledged; these wind farms were never going to be commercially viable, and no matter how much activists crow about climate change, if something like this that requires billions of dollars in investments (not counting all the necessary changes to the grid) isn't commercially viable, then it's not going to happen. Reality, it seems, just won't be denied. It's good to see that, at least in this case, sanity won't be denied either. Now if we can only apply that to all the other commercially un-viable "green energy" projects that are being subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
I'll close with my traditional statement: I'll start believing there's a climate crisis when the people who keep telling me there's a climate crisis start acting like there's a climate crisis.
