Across the U.S. and in Europe, at least ten offshore projects in recent weeks have been delayed or “hit the doldrums.” The reported malaise isn’t cheap, with a $33 billion price tag, reports the WSJ.
Outside of nuclear power, observes the WSJ’s James Freeman in “Best of the Web,” “the zero-emission energy movement isn’t exactly thriving.”
The WSJ’s Mari Novik and Jennifer Hiller report:
The wind business, viewed by governments as key to meeting climate targets and boosting electricity supplies, is facing a dangerous market squall.
Against the Wind
After months of warnings about rising prices and logistical hiccups, developers and would-be buyers of wind power are scrapping contracts, putting off projects and postponing investment decisions. The setbacks are piling up for both onshore and offshore projects, but the latter’s problems are more acute.
President Joe Biden announced a 1,562-square-mile national monument. The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni monument, meaning “where tribes roam,” will conserve “landscape sacred to Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples and advance President Biden’s historic climate and conservation agenda,” according to the White House.
Not reported by the Biden White House, the land includes America’s only source of high-grade uranium ore that is economically competitive on the global market. The U.S. imports about 95% of the uranium used for nuclear power reactors, mostly from Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia, and Australia. Russia is the U.S.’s third-biggest uranium source.
In what will be a win for Russia, the new government land grab and the loss of potential uranium mining isn’t the only problem with the president’s action, notes Mr. Freeman.
In the Salt Lake Tribune, Mark Eddington reports that a Kanab City Council member and 6th generation rancher grazes his 200 head of cattle on roughly 48,000 acres. Chris Heaton, who owns or leases the acreage, is especially worried. The monument includes 1,000 acres of Heaton’s private property.
“Ranchers have been using this land since we came here, and we have done a pretty dang good job of it,” Heaton said. “That’s why the [federal government] wants it, because they think they manage it better than we can.”
Heaton also called the notion that the national monument would protect indigenous people’s culture and sacred sites a smokescreen because the government will lure thousands of people to the region through advertising, which will result in the land being desecrated with graffiti and human waste.
Read more in The Magic of Free Wind.
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