Our docuseries will be out next Wednesday, more rural resistance to solar, Apache and Tohono O’odham sue to stop SunZia, and China's record coal production
Hi Martin…I never thought about this aspect of abandoning wind and solar facilities. When I look at leases or options it is to make sure they have enough property to build out the project. It didn’t occur to me that the landowner could get stuck with huge decommissioning costs.
The 1970s push for wind power in CA resulted in tax credit driven, poorly designed and constructed wind projects popping up all over the state. They were abandoned when the tax credits ran out and their front loaded power purchase agreements became less profitable. One only need drive through the Altamont pass east of San Francisco to see the wreckage left behind.
Thankfully wind was a tiny part of the generation mix in those days, so they weren’t missed at all. It would be different today.
New Mexico is home to 30% of crude oil production from the most prolific oil and gas field in the U.S., the Permian Basin. The other 70% is located in Texas. Last year the Permian Basin's revenue in royalties and taxes, and other permits, and filings (environment, etc) brought in $181 billion to the states and had 786,000 full time jobs in the field.
This month, New Mexico will begin construction of 1,000, 450' high wind turbines crossing Lincoln, Torrance and San Miguel Counties to hook up into the SunZia 550 mile "twin" ultra high power transmission lines into AZ. This massive green energy project is not bringing electricity to NM, or AZ but on to CA. The ranchers in NM have raised concerns about Pattern Energy, the owner of the SunZia project, since its employees have zero regard for private land use, zero waste disposal, dropped lines and other problems with the transmission lines. But, Democrats who run the state, in typical left fashion have taken $3.5 billion from the expansion of fossil fuel production to diversify NM's economy to wind and solar. But, they give 600,000 acres of land in NM to Pattern for the SunZia project and won't be getting any electricity from its wind generation to the state.
So, we'll see how this wind turbine construction goes in Lincoln County, since quite a bit of the county is owned by the Mescalero-Apache tribe. So, good luck to another useless wind project that will slaughter apex predators, impact migration patterns, take out millions of bats and insects, and in all likelihood be fighting the tribes since they will not take this lying down. And, all for 3GW (they wish) of unreliable electricity going into a state using so much renewable energy that it can barely keep its lights on. But, that's CA. It's the left way or the highway and for those able to get that U-Haul appointment, they'll be taking the highway, and heading east across the state line.
Robert I would still like to see you invite one of the senior staff from NERC to talk to you on the Power Hungry Poscast and discuss what they are doing.
China is not only building coal plants. They added more solar capacity last year than the US has installed in total. They're also building nuclear plants faster than anyone. I live in Asia and it's difficult for those who haven't been here to understand how populous these countries are, and how much they want to reach a similar living standard to that in the West.
300,000 solar panels made by slaves in China using coal-fired powered electricity no less. All to produce a whopping 80MW of unreliable juice, on 900 acres. It just takes one serious hail storm too and the whole thing has to be binned. Dogma over weighing up the pros and cons once again.
Noticed a bunch of broken windmills in South Texas recently. Who will repair the windmills when the companies who built them go broke?? And has anybody else noticed that the first thing to break down on an old car is something with the electrical or computer system? Curse non-mechanical car parts!! (just to add a bit of humor to your awesome reporting, Robert)
Yes, those landowners who think they're getting nice payments from their wind leases will see a different reality when the turbines have worn out and the "owners" disappear when it's time to spend $400,000 on decommissioning.
In California, all of the project developers are LLCs. Many of them are owned by other LLCs, and many of those are owned by offshore entities of some sort. The solar/wind generator is the only asset of the LLC(s). I expect this is true everywhere.
If the subsidy goes away, if the solar/wind project deteriorates early, they can default on their contracts and disappear. There is no one to sue.
California has some experience with this. The first big wind push included tax breaks that expired. After the tax breaks went away all the phony companies abandoned the wind farms. You can still see the hulks of the old ones littering the landscape.
Expect the same thing 7-10 years from now. Where does the power come from then?
Lee I commented on Energy Bad Boy's Substack because of your thoughtful comment. With regard to your and Jeff Walther's points, I have reviewed dozens of Wind and Solar Easements and Leases and most if not all of them place the decommissioning burden on Landowners if the developer fails. Wisconsin Law is also very weak when it comes to requiring financial assurances. The contracts provide for leaving electrical cables in the ground, along with hundreds of yards of concrete.
The federal government has a bureaucracy devoted to developing "clean energy resources" on Indian reservations. We, naively, bid on a couple of studies, and got both contracts. On our first site visit, the two of us were joined by enough federal agency employees to fill two large passenger vans, which followed us around to a couple of possible sites and the tiny 60 Kv substation that was the only possible interconnection point. The government people would unload from the vans, walk around, talk and laugh, had no idea what they were looking at and had no interest in finding out.
We came back to meet with the tribal leaders. Us, four guys from the tribe and a standing room only crowd of government people. We talked about the day and next steps for the study.
The tribal "War Chief" pulled us into his office after the meeting and said... Every time white people show up around here we get screwed. They built a dam right on top of the sacred burial grounds, flooded our melon fields... etc... I don't care about the solar energy or whatever BS you are talking about, I want you to get the hell off our land and never come back. They made this guy the war chief for a reason.
We told the government that the interconnection was too expensive and challenging the project was not worth pursuing, which was true. We sent the report and never went back.
Looking forward to your new series. Americans are starting to wake up and push back against EV's and renewables. Maybe everyone should send the 2021 video to all of their contacts of John Kerry saying that the US alone can't impact climate change even if we achieve carbon neutral because the rest of the world continues to install new coal fired power plants. And oh yeah, we're already at the dreaded 1.5 degree C temp increase and the world is growing more food then ever. Plants and trees have never been so healthy due to the increase of CO2.
I'm inclined to think that the entire PURPOSE of environmentalism is to send all coal to China. We already sent all of our manufacturing and skills to China, why not do the same for the best resource?
Trailer and Docuseries lookin good Robert. Keep up the nice work. Alarming how many $$$$Trillions are being taken from hardworking citizens and misspent on clearly misguided energy sources and "feel good" programs that are exploding our and the world's debt on less reliable, much less energy dense, and counterproductive energy initiatives. Jeopardizing the grids. Almost completely dependent on Communist China mining and refining for the resources and supply chains. Not good. Nearly lunacy in reality.
When one considers the lost opportunity all that squandered wealth represents it is infuriating. Let's take the wealth of civilization and flush it down the renewable energy drain. Sigh.
Hi Martin…I never thought about this aspect of abandoning wind and solar facilities. When I look at leases or options it is to make sure they have enough property to build out the project. It didn’t occur to me that the landowner could get stuck with huge decommissioning costs.
The 1970s push for wind power in CA resulted in tax credit driven, poorly designed and constructed wind projects popping up all over the state. They were abandoned when the tax credits ran out and their front loaded power purchase agreements became less profitable. One only need drive through the Altamont pass east of San Francisco to see the wreckage left behind.
Thankfully wind was a tiny part of the generation mix in those days, so they weren’t missed at all. It would be different today.
New Mexico is home to 30% of crude oil production from the most prolific oil and gas field in the U.S., the Permian Basin. The other 70% is located in Texas. Last year the Permian Basin's revenue in royalties and taxes, and other permits, and filings (environment, etc) brought in $181 billion to the states and had 786,000 full time jobs in the field.
This month, New Mexico will begin construction of 1,000, 450' high wind turbines crossing Lincoln, Torrance and San Miguel Counties to hook up into the SunZia 550 mile "twin" ultra high power transmission lines into AZ. This massive green energy project is not bringing electricity to NM, or AZ but on to CA. The ranchers in NM have raised concerns about Pattern Energy, the owner of the SunZia project, since its employees have zero regard for private land use, zero waste disposal, dropped lines and other problems with the transmission lines. But, Democrats who run the state, in typical left fashion have taken $3.5 billion from the expansion of fossil fuel production to diversify NM's economy to wind and solar. But, they give 600,000 acres of land in NM to Pattern for the SunZia project and won't be getting any electricity from its wind generation to the state.
So, we'll see how this wind turbine construction goes in Lincoln County, since quite a bit of the county is owned by the Mescalero-Apache tribe. So, good luck to another useless wind project that will slaughter apex predators, impact migration patterns, take out millions of bats and insects, and in all likelihood be fighting the tribes since they will not take this lying down. And, all for 3GW (they wish) of unreliable electricity going into a state using so much renewable energy that it can barely keep its lights on. But, that's CA. It's the left way or the highway and for those able to get that U-Haul appointment, they'll be taking the highway, and heading east across the state line.
Robert I would still like to see you invite one of the senior staff from NERC to talk to you on the Power Hungry Poscast and discuss what they are doing.
China is not only building coal plants. They added more solar capacity last year than the US has installed in total. They're also building nuclear plants faster than anyone. I live in Asia and it's difficult for those who haven't been here to understand how populous these countries are, and how much they want to reach a similar living standard to that in the West.
300,000 solar panels made by slaves in China using coal-fired powered electricity no less. All to produce a whopping 80MW of unreliable juice, on 900 acres. It just takes one serious hail storm too and the whole thing has to be binned. Dogma over weighing up the pros and cons once again.
Noticed a bunch of broken windmills in South Texas recently. Who will repair the windmills when the companies who built them go broke?? And has anybody else noticed that the first thing to break down on an old car is something with the electrical or computer system? Curse non-mechanical car parts!! (just to add a bit of humor to your awesome reporting, Robert)
Yes, those landowners who think they're getting nice payments from their wind leases will see a different reality when the turbines have worn out and the "owners" disappear when it's time to spend $400,000 on decommissioning.
In California, all of the project developers are LLCs. Many of them are owned by other LLCs, and many of those are owned by offshore entities of some sort. The solar/wind generator is the only asset of the LLC(s). I expect this is true everywhere.
If the subsidy goes away, if the solar/wind project deteriorates early, they can default on their contracts and disappear. There is no one to sue.
California has some experience with this. The first big wind push included tax breaks that expired. After the tax breaks went away all the phony companies abandoned the wind farms. You can still see the hulks of the old ones littering the landscape.
Expect the same thing 7-10 years from now. Where does the power come from then?
Lee I commented on Energy Bad Boy's Substack because of your thoughtful comment. With regard to your and Jeff Walther's points, I have reviewed dozens of Wind and Solar Easements and Leases and most if not all of them place the decommissioning burden on Landowners if the developer fails. Wisconsin Law is also very weak when it comes to requiring financial assurances. The contracts provide for leaving electrical cables in the ground, along with hundreds of yards of concrete.
The federal government has a bureaucracy devoted to developing "clean energy resources" on Indian reservations. We, naively, bid on a couple of studies, and got both contracts. On our first site visit, the two of us were joined by enough federal agency employees to fill two large passenger vans, which followed us around to a couple of possible sites and the tiny 60 Kv substation that was the only possible interconnection point. The government people would unload from the vans, walk around, talk and laugh, had no idea what they were looking at and had no interest in finding out.
We came back to meet with the tribal leaders. Us, four guys from the tribe and a standing room only crowd of government people. We talked about the day and next steps for the study.
The tribal "War Chief" pulled us into his office after the meeting and said... Every time white people show up around here we get screwed. They built a dam right on top of the sacred burial grounds, flooded our melon fields... etc... I don't care about the solar energy or whatever BS you are talking about, I want you to get the hell off our land and never come back. They made this guy the war chief for a reason.
We told the government that the interconnection was too expensive and challenging the project was not worth pursuing, which was true. We sent the report and never went back.
I had the same experience, in 1983, over a hydro project in Montana. Not an unusual occurrence west of the Missouri River.
Looking forward to your new series. Americans are starting to wake up and push back against EV's and renewables. Maybe everyone should send the 2021 video to all of their contacts of John Kerry saying that the US alone can't impact climate change even if we achieve carbon neutral because the rest of the world continues to install new coal fired power plants. And oh yeah, we're already at the dreaded 1.5 degree C temp increase and the world is growing more food then ever. Plants and trees have never been so healthy due to the increase of CO2.
I'm inclined to think that the entire PURPOSE of environmentalism is to send all coal to China. We already sent all of our manufacturing and skills to China, why not do the same for the best resource?
Can’t wait for the docuseries!
very useful information, as always.
Looking forward to Wednesday the 31st!!
Congratulations and thanks!!!
Look forward to watching and sharing the Docuseries!
Trailer and Docuseries lookin good Robert. Keep up the nice work. Alarming how many $$$$Trillions are being taken from hardworking citizens and misspent on clearly misguided energy sources and "feel good" programs that are exploding our and the world's debt on less reliable, much less energy dense, and counterproductive energy initiatives. Jeopardizing the grids. Almost completely dependent on Communist China mining and refining for the resources and supply chains. Not good. Nearly lunacy in reality.
When one considers the lost opportunity all that squandered wealth represents it is infuriating. Let's take the wealth of civilization and flush it down the renewable energy drain. Sigh.