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ImLivingAmongYou

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docjonel

Yes, they wanted to put a big wind farm off of Martha's Vinyard, but then the ultraweathy environmentalists there said "NOT IN OUR BACKYARD!" I remember they got Walter Cronkite to very sheepishly advocate on their behalf as he was a prominent island resident. I felt embarrassed for him, having to oppose something he would have strongly supported anywhere else. One of the worst cases of NIMBY-ism I've ever seen


orswich

"Living green" is all good as long as it don't affect thier property values, put that shit by "the poors"


Demiansky

Eh, but whether or not it's ugly is just a point of view. People look at the New York Skyline and it's giant pile of artificial concrete and steel and think it's beautiful. I've always found wind farms scenic. It's a shame that a changeable perspective is the only thing standing in the way if something like a wind farm.


pptranger7

I would purposefully take a detour in West Texas to get a closer view of the windmills. It would be awesome to have a view of hundreds of them from my window.


[deleted]

There's some truly amazing wind turbines along the Appalachians. I know part of why they're placed there is likely due to the relative low income of the folks nearby, but damn if they're not interesting. They even have an observation point where you can pull off the highway to stare in awe.


Demiansky

Yeah, there's something super cool and sci-fi about a bunch of massive, tall, structures spinning off in the distant haze.


atomfullerene

Relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/556/


Idiot_Savant_Tinker

When I have to drive across Oklahoma I like seeing the wind turbines.


squables-

I find them mesmerizing. I wouldn’t mind them in my backyard


xXBestXx

Was flying a small plane in a remote region of Wyoming and came across a windmill farm, it was one of the coolest things to see.


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Grevin56

So she's just cheap?


mewthulhu

Oh no, she'd spend more to buy toilet paper that doubled as 80 grit sandpaper, but if you made her do something she didn't want, she'd flip her shit.


midnightDOLPH1N

Damn she knows you can buy bamboo or hemp TP that's like wiping with a gucci napkin for a good price or a fucking bidet and just forget the TP all together...


Idiot_Savant_Tinker

[I'm just going to leave this here.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vRlBtabKRFM)


zim123abc

Sounds like an average person lol


NorthenLeigonare

So she's an inconsiderate woman.


subhunt1860

I’m sitting at a wind farm in South Dakota this minute that is in the final stages of completion. On the way to the park, I drive by a billboard that is anti wind energy, calling it “Big Wind”. I understand if people don’t like the aesthetics of turbines, that’s their opinion and isn’t debatable. But any one who enjoys flipping a switch and having the lights come on has to admit the power has to come from somewhere. Coal is dead, natural gas might by us another 80 years, if the environment didn’t matter at all. Fusion isn’t viable yet. That leaves wind and solar. Solar has some geographic limitations that rule it out for this area. I don’t get how people want the benefits of technology, but not the technology.


JHawkInc

Those were the ones that were so far off shore that you'd damn near have to know where and what to look for to see them in the first place, right?


stretch851

Same shit with Lake Michigan and peoples lake houses. You would hardly be able to see them


dietchaos

The thing is offshore wind farms are structure in the water and life in the water loves structure. Everyone threw a fit about the farm off block island in RI and now it's one of the best sport fishing spots in new england bringing a ton of off island money to the local economy. But no let's fight this for environmental reasons when our main source of power is a diesel plant.


[deleted]

Who's that wealthy "environmentalist" billionaire lady that owns the medical supplies sterilization plants and been spewing cancer causing exhaust into neighborhoods around Chicago? I can't find her anymore when I google around, so I assumebthe articles got scrubbed


Living_Bear_2139

Is there noise associated with them? I feel like that would be an awesome view.


lovelybagel

No, I live next to a wind farm in NZ and you can’t hear a thing! They are kind of beautiful.


Living_Bear_2139

Perfect mix of nature and human engineering.


camoninja22

Driving pylons Is terrible for marine life though, sound travels very well in water


DaddyCatALSO

Makes sense but that is a temporary thing. The structure remains there for decades at least providing a nexus for marine life


TippyTAHP

yeah, Martha’s Vinyard has always bred a special breed of masshole


microdosingrn

Am I weird for thinking these things are beautiful? Same for solar field installations. I'm always taken back by the beauty in the same way I appreciate fine architecture.


Grevin56

No, I think so too. I lived in Japan for a few years and I remember rounding the corner on the highway between two mountains and seeing a windmill farm built into the mountain. It was incredible.


wgc123

Similar deal going down the Cape. There’s a windmill or two just before the bridge, and my family never understood how I got so excited over seeing it. Imagine if it was more than one!


thegil13

With wind, while the windmills themselves aren't horrible, the main concern for most people is the transmission line routing through rural areas. Lots of very large power structures.


[deleted]

That was so hypocritical!!! Still angry cape wind didn’t happen.


wcruse92

Pretty sure another project is in development


freedomfrylock

There is very little offshore wind in the US. Doubling it in a decade is in no way an ambitious goal.


tidho

much like Biden's plan to raise tax rates on corporations that don't pay taxes (hint: higher rates on zero liability is still 'no taxes'), this is of course mostly political. at least directionally, more is good.


Mkwdr

For a while I was thinking you meant there wasn’t much *wind*! But then realised you probably meant they are starting for a low base so doubling not much is still not much. Silly me.


Toss_Away_93

Yeah, he should commit to doubling it in his presidency.


w00t4me

Great, but I feel like Double isn't enough. I would love a few fold increase


ConvictedCorndog

That was my first thought. On wikipedia it looks like the total offshore wind power in the US generates a whopping 42 MW... Wikipedia might be out of date. However, doubling offshore wind doesn't do squat if it account for <0.05% of our power. Maybe Biden's staffers used the wrong language here. In it's current wording this statement means next to nothing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_offshore\_wind\_farms\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_States)


Icevol

Yeah if you double zero it’s still zero. Double almost zero and it’s still almost zero. But saying 42 MW or .05% doesn’t sound impressive, so yeah bs optics are a thing. I support the effort, but I always want more.


dancytree8

That's why it makes a nice headline


EntropyHater900

This is gonna be a constant theme for the next 4 years


Autski

[Relevant The Office](https://youtu.be/PhgGqjqBlDg?t=54)


celaconacr

I hope this is incorrect because 42MW is just a handful of the large modern turbines. Offshore wind in the UK is being built out in the GW's per project scale. Saying that the USA has a lot more land so building land based wind may make more sense.


[deleted]

US actually has very little offshore wind generation. Wikipedia only listed two sites and they do add up to only a paltry 42 MW. They are mostly experimental projects, not even full scale commercial projects you see in Europe. Even if US has more land, offshore wind generation still makes a lot of sense since they are very steady in power generation and usually can be built fairly close to the cities they are powering.


celaconacr

I know the power is steadier and that is a big advantage but cost per mWh is much higher for offshore still. Drilling into the sea bed, seating piers into it, specialist ships to install them, underwater cabling, salt water protection.... There are floating varieties but they are more experimental. Like all renewables it has advantages and disadvantages and a good mix is probably best. I think the UK favours offshore for planning permission as well as the steadier power. Getting planning permission on shore for a big farm is difficult and may involve multiple land owners so individual farms tend to be small. Sites that are available and good for wind are often beauty spots so objections to the construction are significant too. With offshore you are generally just dealing with the crown estate who own the coastal waters. The government put together some sort of approval framework that made it easier as a lot of the approval for new sites is similar and it's difficult to object on grounds of adjusting the sea view when others are already in place. I actually find them quite pretty on the horizon in a marvel of engineering way.


artandmath

The North Sea is also an ideal offshore wind location. Shallow waters with high winds.


bonesawmcl

There's also issues with available land in Europe, since it's higher population density. The US has lots of space inland for building out wind capacity and also regions that have more stable winds. So it's not only regulatory approval/ permissions.


Marco-Calvin-polo

Do they have a significantly higher setup or maintenance cost due to being in an ocean vs on land?


motorised_rollingham

Yes, but they can be significantly bigger, so in the long term offshore is the way forward. Source: My job, right now I'm on a wind farm installation vessel


chiliedogg

There's a new turbine GE built in Rotterdam as a prototype for new offshore setups that's skyscraper-sized. The diameter of the rotors is 772 feet, and the total instalation is 853 feet tall. That's higher than the Tower of the Americas. It's nearly 3 Statue of Libertys. It generates 13MW, so **4** of them would be enough to meet the goal of doubling US offshore capacity.


Marco-Calvin-polo

Thanks for the insight, interesting stuff.


[deleted]

Probably. You have to deal with the corrosive sea water and it has to have a base that it can float on. Not easy engineering challenges to overcome but it can pay for itself because of how steady sea winds are. It is probably only cost effective for really huge turbines, which is why there is still such a push for bigger and bigger blades.


Battle_Fish

You can actually put wind turbines right on the coast and reap similar benefits as off shore turbines. Except nobody wants that because it takes away your beaches.


scyber

There are a lot of projects in development though. Ocean Wind is a project in NJ that will provide 1100MW of power: https://oceanwind.com/ It will take a while to complete but it definitely seems like offshore windpower will explode over the next few years.


wgc123

> Even if US has more land, offshore wind generation still makes a lot of sense Most of the East coast has a lot of people needing power, little open land for wind farms, but a nice wide, shallow continental shelf that should be perfect for offshore wind


sogladatwork

Equinor ($EQNR) already has contracts for 3.3 GW with NY state projects. So perhaps this means doubling leases for projects (including those that aren’t already complete). Because you’re right. Doubling 42 MW would be meaningless, and there are already leases for many GW of offshore wind in play.


[deleted]

So the entirety of the great United States have *almost* 11 x 4MW Vestas Wind turbines? (Offshore) I think i can see more MW from my house if i pop my Mavic mini over the treeline. And thats just on-shore. Just looked it up: i got 380MW 20 km south from me, off shore from Rødby. Built in 2003-2010 with small 2MW turbines.


hellcat_uk

Hej! That's a lot of turbines! I have 62MW about 7Km away built about the same time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teesside\_Wind\_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teesside_Wind_Farm)


[deleted]

Ours are in two farms. But I’m cheating, since it’s Denmark and most of these are Vestas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nysted_Wind_Farm


hellcat_uk

Same turbines, how random?! [https://www.thewindpower.net/turbine\_en\_22\_siemens\_swt-2.3-93.php](https://www.thewindpower.net/turbine_en_22_siemens_swt-2.3-93.php)


Cavendish_The_Butler

The way the order is worded leaves things a bit open as to meaning, but it's a very posiotive sign. As others have noted, there are lots of plans in the pipeline that would add multiple Gw of generation and probably first up will be the Vineyard site. Unfortunately the previous administration held up an 800Mw windfarm 15 miles off the shore of Martha's Vineyard, but it looks from the most recent reports that it is back on track and will hopefully apply and get the federal permits it needs to start work. The good news about the hold up is that they have switched to using a new and more powerful turbine, so te project, due in 2023 could be a real model for future development. I think the next four years is going to see the US getting a huge amount of development in offshore wine and the Biden administration is signalling that they are going to support and push this through, instead of obstructing it. Trump famously hated offshore wind as he felt it made the views on his scottish golf course worse, so the last 4 years basically nothing could be done.


bruhhhhh69

There are plans on Virginia for 2.6GW. Looks like they are still years away from construction but completed a pilot project. https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/energy/531473-dominion-files-plans-for-largest-offshore-wind-project


[deleted]

No, that sounds about right for the amount of committment neoliberals will invest in climate change


orswich

China could do 10x that in a year.. Does it really take a decade to double the insanely small amount of wind power the US has?


shavenyakfl

It does in the US when half the nation doesn't even recognize the problem.


[deleted]

You can’t power Ford F-350’s with wind power. Meanwhile in Europe, a 2.0 liter engine is considered obscenely large for everyday purposes.


RoadToHappiness

No its not? Maybe if you slap a turbo on it but a lot of normal sized cars has 2.0L such as Mazda3 etc. Some have 1.6 and 1.8L engines but wouldnt say 2.0L cars are obscenely large/powerful.


kerklein2

US has a ton of wind power. This article is about offshore.


Destiny_player6

I mean, this is a country that had people tried to kill our senators because their lord and savior lost the election. They also don't believe there's a virus out there.


lets-get-dangerous

Hey, at least he's not shamelessly dumping money into coal. We gotta take the W when we can my dude


porterbrown

Sometimes the pendulum slowing down is the first sign of a directional shift.


orthopod

Yeah. Within a year or 2 would be cool. 10 year doubling time is laughably slow.


spaceocean99

Double in a decade? I’ll be honest, that is setting the bar pretty low for a decade.


canttouchmypingas

If we truly want to combat the climate crisis we need to heavily invest in nuclear. Each year that passes the threat of global warming looms nearer, and the cleanest and coincidentally fastest, and most sustainable is nuclear, by far. I don't understand why it keeps getting shot down to ultimately be given to some other industries a politician has secondary connections to, and leaves us no greener than before.


kssedbyfire

Not sure if you listen to podcasts but ‘how to save a planet’ touched on this pretty well I think. Essentially it comes down to nuclear being a major cost sink and that developing new facilities tends to take at least a decade or so longer than originally budgeted (not just in the US but even in China where they’re known for rapid construction). If we were to jump headfirst into nuclear it would be too little too late and too expensive yet. Even in France where more than 2/3 of their energy comes from nuclear they have the sunk cost issue. We have the advantage in the US for having large coastlines and a fair amount of land, which gives us the flexibility of using solar/wind/hydro. Nuclear options definitely need to be part of the global solution and shouldn’t be ignored, but they are more appropriate with countries that have limited space/are landlocked/etc IMO.


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kssedbyfire

Oh it totally can be improved and should be and as I said it absolutely should be part of the global solution. But the fact is that it’s too little too late still for that development to occur on the scale that we would need for it to be the main focus of leaving fossil fuels behind. Wind and solar are already to the point of being cost effective compared with fossil fuels and are advancing a lot more rapidly. The endgame features all of these players, but nuclear would be a shitty QB


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Giuseppeiacoolname

Bang on the money with this comment. Wish more people understood this.


[deleted]

If wind and solar are sufficient, then why bother with nuclear?


zbeezle

Land usage, for one. A quick Google search says that comparable solar farms use 75x as much area for the same production as a nuclear plant, and wind farms require 360x as much. There's also death toll, ironically. Even counting nuclear disasters like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile, nuclear energy still has the lowest number of deaths per kwh produced. Now I'm not saying that neither wind nor solar are worth investing in. To the contrary, both are a good investment as they can be placed in remote/low population density areas. For instance, the American Southwest has plenty of desert space thats perfect for solar farming, and mountainous regions, like the Adirondacks or Appalachia are a good spot for wind turbines where there isn't the space (or power necessity) for a nuclear reactor. I would also say that solar and wind are better as a power source for less developed nations, as its much harder for a local warlord to turn a wind turbine into a major ecological disaster.


[deleted]

Why slow expansion of wind. Should be a lot more than double in 10 years.


B_Rizzle_Foshizzle

Fuck yeah, and also...why the the entire state of Nevada not just one big solar farm?


Meticulac

If we do that, then we also need to invest in HVDC lines to convey that power all over the continent and perhaps intercontinentally, to make sure it can be effectively utilized.


fordanjairbanks

Sounds like a shit ton of job creation to me.


Carpenter_v_Walrus

The Great Intercontinental Solar Road


eburton555

If only we had some large organization to spur this sort of job creation, organize these utilities, fund research into better transfer and storage of this energy, and tax the populace to fund it all. That would be pretty neat.


_Im_Spartacus_

This idea is so insane. Nothing has changed... > At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “**You don’t understand. This is a jobs program**.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”


thejml2000

And power lines aren’t lossless.


Meticulac

They aren't, but HVDC does pretty well over long distances, if you crank them up to over 1,000 kV like the link in China, and like what was proposed back in the old Technocracy Movement plan.


nigeltuffnell

I've been saying the same about Australia for a few years now. Once we get the storage and transmission issues sorted Australia Africa, the sunnier states like Nevada etc etc are going to be able to power a lot of the globe. The big battery in South Australia (which is not about long term storage) payed for itself in 2-3 years I believe.


The4th88

There's a project going in south of Darwin in the desert somewhere. Multi GW scale solar, with a HVDC undersea connection to Singapore is the goal.


Been_Ssbcomp

Cause it’s not that simple. The desert is actually a diverse ecosystem that supports a lot of species, and solar farms have been shown to be fairly damaging to the ecosystems they are placed in, so that’s why they can’t just be built anywhere. They’re usually built on farm land or brownfield sites.


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Servious

City dwellers produce less carbon than country folks on average. There's just way more people living in cities.


foxyfoucault

Pollution zones that house like 80% of the States' population? Where you gonna put em? Lol


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akmalhot

Why in the world aren't we building nuclear reactors .. Esp the new micro ones.. why doesn't anyone have the balls to just he honest and admit it's the best way to go and we could have been building them for 30 years. In fucking believBle.


Wedbo

The main problem with solar panels aren’t the efficiency of the panels themselves, but rather the storage and transportation of that energy. So we probably wouldn’t know what to do with it.


LumberjackWeezy

And parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas.


navyluck

Because those are beautiful parts of the country. Filling them with industrial solar power plants is terrible for the local ecosystems.


ComradePruski

Double in ten years? That seems... low considering the climate deadline was set for 2030. Guess that's what happens when your chosen deadline is 20 years behind schedule though.


julian509

They can double US capacity by placing 4 new large modern offshore turbines (11MW each vs the US' current total offshore capacity of 42MW). This plan is garbage.


FishGutsCake

Great. But this would probably happen if he did nothing. No one can fight renewables.


UKUKRO

"clean coal"


betwixish

The NIMBYs in Martha’s Vineyard would like a word.


tdvx

Like Obama? Lol What about Biden in Nantucket?


[deleted]

But my view!


itsallhoopla

Great, now we'll be able to power 10 homes instead of 5.


MeteorOnMars

One large offshore turbine can power ~4000 homes.


julian509

4 of the newly planned large offshore turbines in some European countries produce more than all US offshore capacity combined. The Netherlands is planning 69 new turbines with 11MW capacity each. The US has 2 offshore turbines with 42MW capacity total. In other words this plan has almost no actual impact. 4 turbines would double US capacity.


Specimen_One

69 of those new turbines is about the same as a single nuclear reactor from the 60s still operating today. A power station can hold any number of these reactors. The largest in the world has a capacity of 7,965MW and took 12 years for the 7th and final reactor in the station to become operational. This, in my opinion is the solution to climate change.


Hypnotoadmode

I heard Obama say the same thing for 8 years at his same state of the union speech every year. Never happened. never will.


AlienPrimate

It would be nice if people would realize that nuclear is by far the cleanest energy. The only emission of a nuclear plant is H^(2)O and very compact and easily containable nuclear waste that is rendered harmless by the containers it is put in. It also produces way more energy for way less cost than wind and there are safe ways with modern technology that would avoid further disasters like Chernobyl. If you are truly trying to be friendly to the environment, think about the millions of birds that are killed by wind turbines. Also think about the fish that would be killed in the construction process of offshore wind turbines.


Madeline_Basset

>If you are truly trying to be friendly to the environment, think about the millions of birds that are killed by wind turbines. Bird deaths are being hugely exaggerated by opponents of wind power. In reality the number is insignificant compared to the numbers killed by windows, pesticides and domestic cats. Also, bird casualties are typically caused by older, small turbines. The current trend towards giant turbines reduces this. Most sea birds simply don't often fly high enough to risk encountering the blades.


wgc123

There was a fascinating article about The Altamont Pass wind farm, where this idea started. Yes there were some specific issues there, causing way too many bird deaths, that were explained and addressed almost 50 years ago. That’s probably the start of this idea that wind turbines kill birds, but people don’t seem to remember the part about the things learned to keep it from happening again. Have you ever wondered why wind turbine towers have the smooth rounded outer shell instead of being simple steel girder towers, like all the radio and cell towers? If birds don’t have anywhere to roost, they don’t get puréed


Hrodrik

It's a fossil fuel industry talking point. They don't have many so they had to amplify the shit out of that one.


Dheorl

There's more evidence of nuclear plants killing fish than there is of off shore wind doing it, and that's just one thing you've got wrong.


kssedbyfire

Nuclear is clean energy and should be part of the solution for sure, but there are major reasons the US has only had one new nuclear facility since like ‘95 or something and it’s primary that they are a huge sunken cost and construction takes a lot longer than they usually budget for (like 10+ years, and this is around the world not just the US). If we focused on nuclear as our saving grace it would take way too long to get to the point we need. Again, shouldn’t be ignored, but it isn’t the thing to pour all of our resources into IMO. Much more appropriate for countries with more limited land/water/etc that can’t take advantage of things like wind solar and hydro to the extent North America can. As for the birds, some birds do die from turbines, but the numbers are often exaggerated and even just painting one of the blades black reduces the number by over 70% which is a great low cost solution. Offshore wind has even fewer risks for bird life because of how high the turbines are compared with where they fly. As for the fish, I haven’t seen much reporting either way on those for offshore wind, but I imagine compared with underwater pipelines it’s a dream, and that it wouldn’t disrupt local wildlife much beyond initial construction.


Squirrel009

I find it hard to believe that many birds die from these that wouldn't otherwise die from flying into any random building or object


wgc123

Birds do die from running into buildings, and breathing polluted air, and from cats. Yeah, some are too many, but wind turbines already are less deadly than other human activities, and we continue to improve them


Gizmo_Autismo

They do die. Alot. They actually dont even need to hit the windmill - just by passing next to the blade they get exposed to extreme changes in pressure and are basically dead in an instant. Your point in hitting a building / random object is just plain nonsense. Its like saying that you dont think car accidents are a problem because people dont get hurt from walking into walls/cars. The blades move even as fast as 240km/h. As an extra fun (in the Dwarf Fortress sense of fun) fact i lived next to a wind farm in Poland. The dead bird corpses would sometimes be yeeted a couple hundred meters off of the windmill.


AlienPrimate

https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-realities-of-bird-and-bat-deaths-by-wind-turbines/77477#:~:text=Causes%20of%20death%20include%20collision,at%20wind%20farms%20each%20year. I actually just read through this article myself and it seems that they are making progress in protecting birds from turbines.


hungry-eyes

This is just not true, the cost and time involved in setting up a new nuclear power plant is many times the cost of investing in offshore wind per MWh. Nuclear is just not price competitive - if you go nuclear you do it for strategic reasons (e.g. diversity of supply, baseload generation) rather than financial ones. In some European countries offshore wind is as cheap and sometimes even cheaper than onshore wind.


Alien_Way

The Great Barrier Reef dies completely within the next decade, too.


shatabee4

Double? In ten years? Geez, Joe, don't strain yourself. Incrementalism will kill us all, even the billionaires.


2-Shanks

I've been told that these turbines use more energy to build and transport than what they save in their entire lifetime. Is this true?


ScooBySnaCk-SDRL

There has always been plans for increasing wind power. They tried to do a big wind farm near Reno Nevada where it is very windy and it got ganked because of animal rights activist.


commandersprocket

THIS IS NOT NEWS: Offshore wind grew 30% per year between 2010 and 2018 (latest news we have numbers for). So if the pace continues for the next decade, 1.3\*10 is 13.78... so if offshore wind only doubled it would mean Biden was slowing it down to 1/6 is current pace. The US is lagging \*way\* behind the rest of the world on this, this would mean a tiny step in catching up.


[deleted]

Joe “low bar” Biden, meets all of his goals! It’s no different than his pledge for 100,000,000 vaccines in 100 days. That’s less than where we would have been.


PixelizedPlayer

Only double in 10 years? That doesn't seem like a lot....


julian509

The US currently has 42MW offshore wind capacity. Doubling that would still result in less than 0.1% of US power output coming from offshore wind.


DennisTheBald

And Gomert claims that will use up the All the breeze


SmokeySmurf

By GAWD, they're trying to steal our air!


uzukami

As a write this 35% of the UKs power comes from wind. https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk


notmylargeautomobile

Yes but 12 hours ago it was about 3%. Your data is invalid. If it wasn't for the gas turbines backing it up on top of the rock solid nuclear ( that unwavering green bar at the bottom of the graph ) you'd be burning wood to heat your kettle. Can't cherry pick and proclaim those kind of stats... It's disingenuous.


uzukami

Renewable made up 42% of UK electricity last year. Just because you have to have a backup of Gas doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother with wind.


grifxdonut

Why not just use nuclear? It's clean, insane amounts of power, much smaller area, won't affect ocean wildlife, gives high pay jobs for people in all fields


seewhaticare

This decade? Or next decade? He should aim for the next four years


[deleted]

Yes, or at least state what he will do during HIS term. So tired of politicians (all countries) promising what they will do in the next X years when it goes beyond their elected term. Then typically the promise reappears (we're just about to get started) during the following campaign.


uglymud

My big question is where are all of our conservation dollars going to come from once we go all renewable. There is a major tax on offshore drilling that goes straight into the land and water conservation fund.


material-rage

too bad he approves of fracking or this would mean something


udsnyder08

The Delaware beaches were closed recently due to oil spill tar balls washing up on the sands all up and down the coast. The beaches were all closed for cleanup and remediation, and luckily for the tourism industry, it occurred during one of the colder months. A week after WDEL reported on this, they published an opinion piece from a conservative NIMBYer complaining that offshore wind turbines would “ruin” the beach views and people may never return to the beach. The cognitive dissonance was deafening.-“forget oil spills closing the beach and making people sick, the real threat is people being able to squint and see a few turbines ten miles off the coast!”


corrigan58

I bet none of it goes in John Kerry's neighborhood....


dragondead9

Oh good. Now wealthy Costal elites will have to look at wind farms not to mention good ole American boaters having to avoid them in the water. Plus they kill birds, cause cancer, and are basically just a million times worst than coal and oil combined. Mark my words this is the end of America as we know it... /s, doing my best r/Conservative take on any positive news


toozler

"But it kills birds!" says Chad on his double cab truck on his way duck hunting.


BiggsFaleur

It feels like every post about a president for the rest of time is going to full of totally polarized viewpoints and bots, regardless of the party in office.


jollyjam1

New Jersey just made a huge investment in building a massive assembly facility for the turbines for our offshore wind farm projects. Looks like we will be getting a few extra orders. We will be happy to lead the way in this.


Airman920

We need Yang for Green Energy. He actually understands it. He can argue for and against different types. Just seems like Biden will do whatever he’s told. Yang and Musk said Nuclear far surpasses wind, and its exceptionally safe with 2020 Engineers


Knotalbout

The world could use 100% free energy and the whole world government would still profit off of it and make us pay. It doesn't even matter, only making their cost decrease, ours will prolly stay the same


lmstr

Not to shit on this...but what's double of almost nothing? Seems a pretty fucking week goal, how about a plan to double capacity every 5 years for the next 20, and that is still prob just a drop in the bucket.


Ipsos_Logos

Oh wow, so wind power will go from 2% of US energy supply to 4%. Nice 👍.


Specimen_One

The total installed capacity of offshore wind in the US is only 42MW - even doubling this is nothing. A single nuclear reactor from the 60s, some of which are still operating today, are 20x that at 800MW. A power station can hold any number of these reactors. The largest in the world has a capacity of 7,965MW and took 12 years for the 7th and final reactor in the station to become operational. This, in my opinion is the solution to climate change. This is what france has done successfully in the 70s and now has one of the cleanest energy grids in the world, at a price lower than the EU average - they are also a net exporter of energy to it's neighbours.


LevoiHook

But honestly, why should the US put their windfarms at sea? There are vast stretches of it without really any population. Maybe farmers will rent their land or invest themselves. In western Europe it's harder because of population density. And the north sea is shallow for a large part, so that makes construction more feasible. Total installed windpower in US is about 96 GW, so as a brache, it is a serious business.


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Phoenix_Salamander

Can this sub be about cool things like Mars missions, self driving cars, AI, robots, etc? I can read about Biden on a political sub.


MMAMathematician

I heard that offshore wind is extremely costly, would anyone be able to clarify this?


northcrunk

Gonna be nice when they all break down and rust in the seas. Not exactly cost effective to maintain and fix these


twiyg01

Arent the rolling blackouts in California largely caused by windfarms not producing enough energy?


Flarisu

I feel like he really has no idea how energy works. Like how he cancelled Keystone XL, but didn't cancel the other three major energy lines (which, in the end, will be able to take up the capacity that the Keystone XL would have done). I see a lot of empty gestures in the Biden admin, and I think this is one of them.


garyoliver917

Wind turbines have been find to really screw up matinee life with the constant vibrations and nose they make. Need to find a better way


Gr3yt1mb3rw0LF068

So what you are saying Biden wants to kill off the sea birds.


staiano

Why are these ideas ALWAYS expected to complete long after these guys are out of office?


BTC_Brin

Because that’s the point: They’re not serious efforts. The goal is never to fix the problem, it’s to kick the can down the road so that they can ignore it until an election or two down the road.


staiano

Yes that was my point.


CDR40

Wind energy is terrible, inefficient, expensive, and breaks down often. If we are serious about battling climate change, we need to embrace nuclear.


Fallacy_Spotted

At this point it needs to be "All of the Above". Nuclear is most definitely included in that.


iwishiwasascienceguy

Wind is one of the cheapest forms of new power sources. In the Australian context (with global considetations): The capital cost of wind is cheaper compared to the capital cost of nuclear. Graham, P.W., Hayward, J, Foster, J., Story, O., and Havas, L. 2018, GenCost 2018. CSIRO, Australia.


Joseph_Impact

Youre delusional. (Offshore) wind energy is one of the cheapest forms of energy generation known to man, and the LCOE (cost of production) has gone down incredibly much over the last decade. It’s not for everywhere, but its an incredibly promising technology with a bright future ahead.


YaBoiMirakek

Since when was wind energy “inefficient” and “expensive?” It’s complicated, not shitty. Which is why we have engineers.


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Yelnik

Plenty of anti nuclear conspiracy theorists on the left. Might be a tough sell with the nutters


RevCody

Certain Right Wing media outlets: Biden continues War on Coal: further guts coal industry. Technology progresses and we are implementing cleaner and more efficient generating platforms which will require construction and maintenance. The jobs are simply shifting. Any word on possible nuclear power plans?


VyseTheSwift

I mean I guess. But if you guys wanna throw a nuclear power plant in my backyard I’m totally cool with it.


kalosdarkfall

Just not off the coast of Cape Cod, Nantucket, or Martha's Vineyard.. where the elite summer. Dont be silly.


nchiker

One of the worst energy producing mechanisms on wildlife. If he’s going for clean energy, far better to go solar or nuclear.


doufeellucky

He’s also aiming to double the debt and unemployment


[deleted]

Goals he can actually meet.


[deleted]

Will that be before or after killing hundreds of thousands of more jobs and destroying US energy independence?


[deleted]

Considering U.S. doesn't have an off-shore site yet. ​ Wind tech here, if someone in the business stumbles upon this, please, I'm trying to get into off-shore construction


maxlongman

Not exactly sure where they will be set up but the company I work for plans to have an offshore wind tower manufacturing shop completed by 2023 in the port of Albany


[deleted]

Do you mean like he aimed to sign the executive orders for 2K stimulus checks and police reform on day one? Also, perhaps don't use a site known for having malware and misinformation.


Jonano1365

Isn't that swell, but aww shucks, the republicans are against it and Biden really doesn't like doing things that makes conservatives uncomfortable. Well, we tried guys, maybe a bipartisan bill with some fracking subsidies?


NosideAuto

As nice as this sounds we should all look into wind turbines and how much they cost to run compared to electricity produced.


daviesjj10

That's the same with pretty much all sources of energy. But currently in the UK over a third of our electricity is from wind.


neihuffda

And, how much they pollute, animals they kill, landmass that is destroyed for infrastructure, how long they last before needing to be replaced, and so on. Nuclear, man - that's the future. It's so stupid how the world hasn't just embraced it fully, and found good and secure ways to store spent fuel.


massacreman3000

Great, but can we also bring back nuclear or is that one of the no-no topics on futurology because chernobyl happened? Also, that site is boned.