Tag Archives: energy costs

We Need To Rethink Coastal Wind Farms

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I am not going to go into details on the number of dead whales found on the East Coast since exploration for wind farms began. I am going to focus on the more basic problems caused by off-shore wind farms. On Saturday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about some of the problems with the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (Atlantic Shores) project planned for the New Jersey Coast.

The article reports:

While the Biden administration and other environmental activist groups boast that the Atlantic Shores South project, nearly nine years in the making, is another milestone in the country’s harvesting of green energy, a former U.S. Department of Energy engineer raises alarm bells that not only is this project detrimental to tourism, the ocean’s ecosystem, but it will actually raise energy costs to as high as 80% over the next 20 years.

…“Project 1 and Project 2 are expected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power close to one million homes with clean renewable energy,” according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. 

And while Atlantic Shores South says this project will generate $1.9 billion in economic benefits for the Garden State, an analysis by Edward P. O’Donnell with Whitestrand Consulting found that consumers from residents to commercials to industrial all across the state will see a massive hike in their electric bills. 

The article concludes:

As concerning as it is for Stern to see his electric bills go up, he’s worried about how this green energy project will impact marine animals like whales. 

“The underwater noise from all phases of this, the vessel surveys which use noise devices to characterize the seabed, then the noise from when you pile drive the foundations, and then ultimately the operation of these huge structures create a lot of underwater noise,” Stern said. “We’ve looked at it extensively and we believe it’s going to cause great harm to the whales, to the dolphins, particularly the whales that have to migrate to New Jersey to get where they’re going.”

But according to Stern it gets worse as commercial vessel traffic, military, and fishing boats won’t be allowed in the wind complex.

“So they’re going to be squeezed into these narrow corridors,” Stern said. “And it turns out that the corridors that they’re going to be squeezed into also happens to be a migration corridor for the whales. Now you’re creating, not only a hazard to the whales but a hazard to the vessels.” 

In the Bureau of Ocean of Energy Management’s Environmental Review, the agency acknowledged that the Atlantic Shores South would have a major impact on the North Atlantic White Whale, less than 400 remaining in the wild. 

Stern, who organized Save Long Beach Island in an effort to push back on the project, said there’s also a fear with community members that the windmills, a major eye sore just miles away from the coast, will negatively impact tourism. 

The Long Beach Island Chamber of Commerce said in an email that it was against the project, but did not want to make a comment. 

“What are we doing this for?” Stern said. “People come out and say we have to do this for climate change, but even the agency’s documents say it has a negligible impact on climate change because there is a much bigger dynamic going on there with the rest of the world.”

Stern, along with his comrades in Save Long Island Beach are not giving up and said they will be taking this to court. 

“This is an energy boondoggle,” Stern said. “Unfortunately, it’s also a hazardous boondoggle, and I believe the country will regret this.”

It’s time to re-evaluate.

 

April Inflation Statistics

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On Tuesday, CNN reported that according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday inflation in April was the highest it has been all year.

The article reports:

Wholesale inflation picked up in April to its highest rate in a year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.

The Producer Price Index, which measures the change in prices that manufacturers pay to suppliers, was 2.2% for the 12 months ended in April, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.

That gain is higher than what was seen in March, which was downwardly revised from 2.1% to 1.8%.

On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.5%, a faster pace than March’s 0.1% loss (also downwardly revised) and ran much hotter than what economists had anticipated. Economists were expecting a monthly gain of 0.3%, according to FactSet consensus estimates.

“The concern here is that we now have a trend, an upward trend in producer prices, which can only be passed through to consumers and result in upward pressure on consumer price inflation over the coming months,” Kurt Rankin, senior economist for the PNC Financial Services Group, told CNN in an interview.

And that means interest rates will stay higher for longer and could further delay the Federal Reserve’s plans for cuts on that front, he said.

…While higher energy costs (up 2% in April) helped to push goods prices higher, services inflation is what drove up the overall PPI last month. Nearly three-quarters of the April monthly gain was attributable to price hikes seen by producers of services, according to the report.

Services providers saw a 0.6% increase in prices for the month, the fastest pace seen for that category since March 2022, Rankin noted.

“Services has been the issue over the past year as consumers continue to spend money, and costs for services-oriented businesses is still stronger than goods inflation; but goods producer prices are now also rising after having fallen through most of 2023,” he said.

This is bad news for consumers and also bad news for the Biden administration that wants to get re-elected in November. The promise of cutting the interest rate before the election to bring consumer costs down will not be kept if inflation continues on its current path.

The March Inflation Numbers

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On Wednesday, MSNBC posted the March Inflation Numbers. As any consumer can tell you, inflation is still and issue.

The article reports:

  • The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, rose 3.5% in March, higher than expectations and marking an acceleration for inflation.
  • Shelter and energy costs drove the increase. Energy rose 1.1% after increasing 2.3% in February, while shelter costs were higher by 0.4% on the month and up 5.7% from a year ago.
  • Following the report, traders pushed the first expected rate cut out to September, according to CME Group calculations.

The article notes:

Stocks slumped after the report while Treasury yields spiked higher.

Shelter and energy costs drove the increase on the all-items index.

Energy rose 1.1% after climbing 2.3% in February, while shelter costs, which make up about one-third of the weighting in the CPI, were higher by 0.4% on the month and up 5.7% from a year ago. Expectations for shelter-related costs to decelerate through the year have been central to the Fed’s thesis that inflation will cool enough to allow for interest rate cuts.

Food prices increased just 0.1% on the month and were up 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. There were some big gains within the food category, however.

The measure for meat, fish, poultry and eggs climbed 0.9%, pushed by a 4.6% jump in egg prices. Butter fell 5% and cereal and bakery products declined by 0.9%. Food away from home increased 0.3%.

Elsewhere, used vehicle prices fell 1.1% and medical care services prices rose 0.6%.

The past three years or so have not been a good time for most Americans. Inflation has increased the cost of simply maintaining an average lifestyle. It will be interesting to see if inflation can be brought under control by November and if people will vote their pocketbooks.

When What He Says Does Not Match What He Does

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Hot Air posted an article yesterday about a statement that President Joe Biden made on his first day in office. President Biden stated that there would be a ‘pause’ on drilling permits on public lands or for offshore sites. Obviously this was not good news for the oil and gas industries. However, things were not what they appeared to be.

The article reports:

Many of us who follow the energy industry closely had a sinking feeling because that “pause” could easily turn into a de facto ban. But not long after that, a strange thing happened. Permits began to quietly be approved again. Unless I missed it, I never saw an official announcement from the White House declaring an end to the pause, but business seemed to be returning to normal in the oil and gas industry. (Or as close to normal as anything gets these days.) And now, in news that will likely come as a shocking disappointment to many of Biden’s most ardent supporters in the environmental movement, the total number of permits issued since Joe Biden was sworn in has grown to record levels not seen since George W. Bush was in office. (Associated Press)

The article concludes:

So what’s going on behind the scenes? That’s not too difficult to figure out. Joe Biden is getting a lot of pushback, not just from Republican elected officials, but from the voters. They’ve already watched tens of thousands of good jobs disappear when Biden canceled construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. If he significantly slashes the amount of oil and gas exploration going on, even more jobs will go away.

On top of that, gas prices have been spiking ever since Biden took office. If they continue to rise and he’s seen as having squeezed the supply, he’ll be the one taking the blame for it. It’s simply not practical to basically shut down the oil and gas industry in this country and it would be political suicide to try it. That one industry impacts and supports many others and touches on far more aspects of voters’ lives than just the cost they pay at the pump or the heating bill they receive at the end of the month.

In other words, both Biden and Haaland (Interior Secretary Deb Haaland) talked a good game on the campaign trail and the Sunday morning shows. But when the time came for actual action, calculations were made and some campaign promises no longer were practical to keep.

The fact that the campaign promise was broken is good for America. It means that the cost of driving our cars and heating our homes will not go through the roof. It would be nice if we could continue to be energy independent–for both economic and security reasons.