When it comes to the supposed strength of renewables, nature cannot be fooled.
U.S. Offshore Wind Prospects: Overblown Promises and Blown-Up Costs
February 11, 2021 6:30 AM
In energy policy, it is physics that matters above all else. Executive Orders from the Oval Office, Directives of the European Union, or Acts of Parliament driven through with fanfare by Her Majesty’s Government in London may give the plausible appearance that wishes are horses and beggars may ride, and in comfort too, but it is no more than appearance. As Richard Feynman, the great laughing natural-philosopher of our age, observed with savage economy after the Challenger disaster: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations,
Physics matters. It was not a random or arbitrary fluctuation, much less political favor or the power of vested interest, that led coal to dominate British energy supply as early as 1700, eroding the status of a deeply resistant landed aristocracy and gentry. It was not thanks to politicians that in the following centuries coal, oil, and gas established an overwhelming position in global energy supply. On the contrary, it was the intrinsic physical properties of those fuels that led to their preferment, properties which can be summed up in a single term: Fossil fuels are of low entropy. They are, in the technical, thermodynamic sense, highly improbable, being dense stocks of energy, the improbability of which can be rendered in a multitude of changes to the world in accordance with human wishes, improbable changes that we call wealth. And if the low-carbon candidates to replace those fossil fuels do not have similarly favorable or superior physical properties, no amount of policy support will be able to compensate for the deficiency. Nature cannot be fooled. Reality matters.
But what is the reality of renewable energy? In one of his first actions as president, Mr. Biden has expressed the wish to “double” offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030, an ambiguous phrase that probably means he and his advisers wish to see twice the current development portfolio of offshore wind capacity to be operational within a decade, or 18,000 MW rather than the present 9,000 MW in an advanced stage of preparation. The attraction is easily explained. The U.S. already has a great deal of onshore wind power, 112,000 MW, subsidized through Production Tax Credits and mostly located on and around a line running from North Dakota to Texas, a broad belt characterized by strong winds, cheapish land, and low construction costs. Unfortunately, it is also distant from the main corridors of demand on the East and West coasts. Offshore wind along the coasts therefore seems like a tempting option for expansion, but is it wise?
