Offshore wind is a terrible way to reduce CO2 emissions
By David Wojick |June 26th, 2023
The sole justification offered for the offshore wind stampede is that we need to reduce CO2 emissions from electric power generation. A quick look at the numbers shows that this is a truly terrible idea. Here is a very simple gander at the likely costs and supposed benefits.
First let’s do what I call a “fantasy cost benefit analysis” for offshore wind emission reductions. It is a fantasy because it simply assumes (1) every MWh of wind generation eliminates a MWh of gas fired power and (2) there are no environmental costs or cost increases. We are isolating the simplest possible case
Mind you we are also going to use the so-called Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) to calculate the supposed benefits from the CO2 reduction. This SCC is also a fantasy but that is another issue.
As always we will use New Jersey’s wishful target of 11,000 MW of offshore wind capacity as our example. This is merely a convenient example as the the analyses are quite general.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/06/26/offshore-wind-is-a-terrible-way-to-reduce-co2-emissions/
