Shell Walks Away From Major New Jersey Offshore Wind Farm (apnews.com) 130
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: In the first serious fallout from President Donald Trump's early actions against offshore wind power, oil and gas giant Shell is walking away from a major project off the coast of New Jersey. Shell told The Associated Press it is writing off the project, citing increased competition, delays and a changing market. "Naturally we also take regulatory context into consideration," spokesperson Natalie Gunnell said in an email.
Shell co-owns the large Atlantic Shores project, which has most of its permits and would generate enough power for 1 million homes if both of two phases were completed. That's enough for one-third of New Jersey households. It's unclear whether Shell's decision kills the project -- partner EDF-RE Offshore Development says it remains committed to Atlantic Shores. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order singling out offshore wind for contempt with a temporary halt on all lease sales in federal waters and a pause on approvals, permits and loans. Perhaps most of interest to Shell, the order directs administration officials to review existing offshore wind energy leases and identify any legal reasons to terminate them.
[...] The Biden administration approved plans to build the Atlantic Shores project in two phases in October, but construction has not begun. Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF, said the partners are facing significant uncertainty about their lease, and other developers are watching what happens with Atlantic Shores closely. "We're in uncertain territory here," he added. [...] Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said that without Shell's financial backing, it appears the project is "dead in the water." Shell is writing off a nearly $1 billion investment. It announced its decision on Thursday, as it reported a 16% decline in full-year earnings of $23.7 billion from $28.3 billion. Most of its business is oil and gas.
Shell co-owns the large Atlantic Shores project, which has most of its permits and would generate enough power for 1 million homes if both of two phases were completed. That's enough for one-third of New Jersey households. It's unclear whether Shell's decision kills the project -- partner EDF-RE Offshore Development says it remains committed to Atlantic Shores. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order singling out offshore wind for contempt with a temporary halt on all lease sales in federal waters and a pause on approvals, permits and loans. Perhaps most of interest to Shell, the order directs administration officials to review existing offshore wind energy leases and identify any legal reasons to terminate them.
[...] The Biden administration approved plans to build the Atlantic Shores project in two phases in October, but construction has not begun. Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF, said the partners are facing significant uncertainty about their lease, and other developers are watching what happens with Atlantic Shores closely. "We're in uncertain territory here," he added. [...] Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said that without Shell's financial backing, it appears the project is "dead in the water." Shell is writing off a nearly $1 billion investment. It announced its decision on Thursday, as it reported a 16% decline in full-year earnings of $23.7 billion from $28.3 billion. Most of its business is oil and gas.
They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is nobody wants to produce more oil and gas because they're making plenty of money what they're producing now. So there's not going to be any drill baby drill.
Your power bill is going up. Also your tax bill is probably going to double. You won't see it directly it'll be a national sales tax baked into every purchase you make. That money will be shifted into tax cuts for the billionaire buddies running the administration.
I would plan on having at least 10 to 15,000 less money next year. Just remember, if you voted for the occurrence administration you voted for this. Don't fuck it up again. There's a small chance you're going to have a opportunity to fix things in 2 and then 4 years.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump has a personal beef with wind power. That's why he's so obsessed with it and keeps telling lies to sway people about it. Basically they were trying to build a wind farm off the coast near his Scottish golf course (the one that nobody wanted). Trump tried to sue, and lost. Since then we've seen him obsess about it.
He claims to be an expert on windmills, despite still calling them "windmills" :-) He's claimed that the noise causes cancer, that it ruins the environment, that it's the most expensive form of electricity generation, and that if the wind stops that electricity stops (he's never heard of mixing electricity sources on the same grid), and that it killed so many migratory builds (never mind that his administration later made a rule that it was ok to kill migratory birds as long as you didn't mean to).
But none of that is why he originally opposed the wind farm, he opposed it merely because it looked ugly.
Yes, Trump likes to obsess, and he likes to hold a grudge. All fine qualities in a political leader.
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Don Quixote also tilted at windmills
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Informative)
Don Quixote also tilted at windmills
The idiom means to fight battles against something incorrectly perceived as a threat, and it is rather ironic that this is something Trump does both figuratively and literally.
Problem is, it works. If you manage to convince enough people that the windmills really are giants intent on destroying your way of life if you let them, some of them might actually start to believe it.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can get people to believe absurdities you can get them to commit atrocities - Voltaire (more or less)
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Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
Don Quixote may have had some mental illness but he still had good intent. That's the main difference.
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I've always thought wind farms and solar panels look pretty cool and futuristic.
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Yeah, this. The kind of people who say they're a blight on the landscape are also the kind of people who share pictures of muscle cars with hood bulges that make them look like they have a distention and totally fuck up the lines and say THEY DON'T MAKE UM LIKE THAT ANYMORE HOSS GOBBLESS. No shit, they looked misshapen and deformed, like their pollutant- and incest-altered relations.
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Yeah, this. The kind of people who say they're a blight on the landscape are also the kind of people who share pictures of muscle cars with hood bulges that make them look like they have a distention and totally fuck up the lines and say THEY DON'T MAKE UM LIKE THAT ANYMORE HOSS GOBBLESS. No shit, they looked misshapen and deformed, like their pollutant- and incest-altered relations.
Take a look in 40 years and see how many of today's cars are worth keeping.
Hint, it will still be Mustangs and Camaros.
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Take a look in 40 years and see how many of today's cars are worth keeping. Hint, it will still be Mustangs and Camaros.
The classic Mustangs and Camaros were made of a lot of metal and upholstery. The modern ones are made of a lot of plastic inside. Mustangs and Camaros are both pretty impressive cars now, but I don't think very many modern vehicles at all are really going to stand the test of time like vehicles used to.
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Same.
It looks kind of majestic to see a few hundred wind turbines across the horizon.
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Trump doesn't hold a grudge because he can't think straight en
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If he hates windmills so much why hasnt the nickname Don Quixote stuck? A Lack of literature culture?
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People tend to sympathize with Don Quixote. His actions also primarily harmed himself.
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iI thought wind was cheaper than the other options, so why do wind farm projects need federal money to move forward?
If we're going to pretend it something the new administration did (in its first week!) that caused Shell to write-off millions in investments, perhaps Shell wasn't really interested in the project?
Biden signed off on the plan in October, and Shell dropped it 4 months later, citing "delays", "competition" and a changing market.... perhaps when they realized they weren't going to get free money
Re: They didn't walk away from it (Score:2)
Even ignoring the batteries and extra transmission needed, offshore wind is roughly as expensive as nuclear power in many areas. The variance is large based on wind speed and more importantly the depth you have to set the foundations at. Plus the ocean is dramatically harder on equipment, relative to a wind turbine in a corn field. There are some ongoing attempts to make cheaper turbines that float and are only loosely anchored, kind of like bouys with a windmill on them, but that's still early days and ha
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Offshore wind is expensive. Land-based wind is in fact the cheapest way to generate power today.
IMHO floating turbines will help reduce the price a lot. They would also get rid of the construction work which is the actual threat to marine life.
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They would also get rid of the construction work which is the actual threat to marine life.
Perhaps during construction.
Afterwards it is a paradise for marine life. All kinds of muscles, shrimps and lobsters strive there.
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Because they do not want to sell cheap power.
They want to sell expensive power.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Interesting)
While I don't know the specifics of this project, people here seem to miss some context. Royal Dutch Shell was an anglo-Dutch company that was very involved in wind projects globally. During 2022 they moved officially to the UK, renamed to 'Shell' and in early 2023 the Dutch CEO was shitcanned and a new arab CEO was appointed - Wael Sawan. He wasted no time immediately starting to cut back on any green projects. You can find the employee calls to not do it in 2023: https://www.reuters.com/sustai... [reuters.com]
Since then one after the other renewable energy project was scrapped. Big companies are like oil tankers, it takes a while to change direction. So we are still seeing these announcements left and right of shell cancelling some project. Here about cutting the unit in May: https://www.power-technology.c... [power-technology.com]
While I'm sure that like many other companies the Trump election was the queue to take the mask off completely and quit any pretenses of loving earth or humans immediately, this was all part of a process already set in motion a while ago.
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This! At least someone is paying attention. This announcement here would be the 4th mega wind project that Shell has either aborted or divested from in the past 3 years. The others were all in green energy friendly countries.
The new CEO is on the record, Shell's green energy focus is almost exclusively on heavy industry and heavy mobility (reads: hydrogen and ammonia, with a smidgen of biofuels). The division responsible for wind energy went through massive staff cuts last year, most of the staff gone were
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They were pushed. The current administration took half a billion dollars at least, I mean that we know of, from big oil.
Yes they were pushed but not from the current administration. They were pushed by shareholders and the new CEO. Shell has walked away from about 4 major wind projects in the past 2 years (since the new CEO took over) including projects in places with wind / green energy happy governments like Ireland. They completely gutted their new energy division last year and announced that all focus on new energy would be on heavy mobility (reads: hydrogen / ammonia and not wind).
The current administration in the USA i
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Hopefully the orange idiot dies before then.
I wish the assassin hadn't missed.
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There's a small chance you're going to have a opportunity to fix things in 2 and then 4 years.
Interesting. You think it is possible to fix this by voting. You just won't give up the delusion that the voting process has been entirely captured. Voting for the "other party" won't do shit. The "other party" circumvented all of its rules and bylaws to produce candidates that were certain to fail under the circumstances given... and yet we are to vote for them to fix the issue of corrupted government? Your naivety has become stupidity.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumption taxes are effectively regressive. If you're making close enough to minimum wage, they're practically indistinguishable from a second layer of income tax. They're the worst type of taxes for most workers. If you're making far more money than you know what to do with or at least enough that you can avoid sales taxes in the jurisdiction where you make your money by spending a large fraction of your money elsewhere, they may not look so bad though.
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Not if there's a rebate. See: the long-dead Fair Tax.
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Prebate not rebate.
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Whether it's a prebate or rebate, it only mitigates the issue at the bottom end. It would still appear mostly regressive overall and would become increasingly negligible and avoidable through travel as your wealth increases.
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It would still appear mostly regressive overall
Payroll taxes (SS & Medicare) are even more regressive, and they disincentivize work rather than consumption.
So replace payroll taxes with a VAT, and everyone benefits.
Of course, the chance of this happening is 0%.
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And I don't see how "everyone" would benefit from a VAT. VAT is only applied when purchases are made. Somebody who makes $20k/year and spends $20k total would pay a certain VAT. Somebody who makes $2M/year and also spends $20k total and saves the rest would pa
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You are right that should the SS payments be made non-taxable or if the SS trust fun
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if there's a rebate. See: the long-dead Fair Tax.
Problem is, anytime you try to make a regressive tax into a progressive one, you just end up with more bureaucracy than just using a progressive income taxation scheme in the first place. The reason is quite simple: Any sort of means testing to see who is entitled to a refund or rebate or however you try to make your tax scheme more fair for lower income earners, is going to require some form of income reporting. You might as well just tax the income and be done with it.
Also, there's what I hilariously like to call "the iPhone tax problem". Basically, whether you're rich, poor, or somewhere in between, you really only need one phone. So, as a percentage of income, if you earn $50k per year and buy a $1k iPhone, using Florida's sales tax as an example, you've just paid 0.14% of your income in taxes. For Elon Musk to pay that same percentage of his annual income in taxes on a phone, he'd need to buy about 20,000 of them. Consumption taxes just suck.
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No, you prebate everyone at average consumption, so the majority of people are actually getting a slight bonus (average is higher than median).
You don't need to see who gets it, everyone does (there's room to debate who "everyone" is, but generally adult permanent residents living in the country would be a starting point).
It also lays out a framework for a UBI of that's the type of thing you're into, since as the economy can afford it you can increase the prebate levels (in a perfect world I'd think UBI sho
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Huh? How is a flat tax more bureaucracy? By taxing at point of consumption, you eliminate the need for filing taxes, deductions, accountants, lawyers...hell, the entire IRS could probably be ditched. Just sales tax w/ prebate to "progessive" the curve. Problem solved. And on top of that, you'd earn income from tourists
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The beauty of a prebate is that you don't need to means test it (I don't think fair tax had means testing for example).
Everyone gets it, you just set the prebate level at a point where it (more than) completely offsets what level you want to be protected from regressive tax.
I'd think setting it at average consumption allowing the majority to actually get more back than it costs them.
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Setting a prebate at average consumption would probably make the overall scheme revenue-neutral, or close to it, which is dumb for a tax scheme. You might as well not create the tax at all, because it will distort behaviors (beyond the presumed goal of encouraging saving rather than consumption).
A better approach is to set the prebate at about the level that would be paid at, say, 200% of the poverty line. This makes it progressive while still allowing a lot of the burden to fall on the middle class, who
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The so-called "Fair Tax" is better called a "stupid tax".
The only point of a flat tax scheme is simplification. If people still have to file and you still have to issue rebates then it's not simplifying anything. Just stick with a graduated tax scheme in that case, which already has the rebates baked in for most people. It achieves the same goal, with less work.
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Consumption taxes are effectively regressive.
It depends on the product being taxed. Is the product type something that poor people tend to buy? Or is it a luxury item that mostly rich people buy?
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm skeptical that Big Oil is paying Trump to destroy its own investments.
Those aren't investments, those are hedges. These are oil companies, oil is far more profitable than wind (or almost anything else), and these companies would like to continue to pump out oil and sell it forever. But they know that can't happen, so they hedge.
It looks like that hedge might be superfluous now, at least for the near future, so they're dropping it.
They need to buy time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They need to buy time. (Score:4, Insightful)
They are doing they opposite. They were doing that a few years ago, and now literally every oil company with massive stakes in wind are back peddling majorly across the entire world. bp sold its stake in a major wind energy in the USA last year. Shell has been selling stakes and cancelling wind projects since their new CEO took over in 2022. Equinor has taken a write down after abandoning wind projects.
Shareholders crucified them about the fact that companies which were *not* exploring green energy had performed far better, and now they are all backpedalling from green projects.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality is we COULD get off the oil tit if we (as a species) wanted to.. but no one wants to because its been turned into a ideological/political issue instead of one that should be about quality of life and survival. Even the Saudi Government (one of the major producers of oil) understand, it won't last forever, so they are investing in a number of other schemes and plans to make oil just a tiny part (of their overall financial portfolio).. Real estate, Technology, education, strategic partnerships with various countries, trade relations, etc... all elements that were bought into by oil money, but should survive post oil.
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Its not about oil. Its about money and control. They dont really care if its wind or oil if you are buying the product. Oil just happens to be a lot cheaper right now. The real question is why do we keep giving these contracts to foreign own companies? shell is a Scandinavian company.
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No one can walk away. (Score:2)
Oil is only profitable because of the demand in that petrolium (And its various distillates) are used world wide for SOOO many things..The reality is we COULD get off the oil tit if we (as a species) wanted to..
Can we? I mean actually?
Here, let me ask that another way; What exactly IS your replacement for plastic?
That, is the actual invention we have still yet to create. Replace every gas-guzzling ICE engine with EV on the planet and you still have to invent that solution. And in SOOO many cases I do mean literally invent. Particularly in medicine.
I really want, to be able to travel the stars. Want and Have, are worlds apart.
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Bio degradable plastic can be made from wood and similar materials. :P
Hard plastics for laptop cases, I do not know.
Most of my laptops are made from aluminium
The only plastic one is a cheap (actually not so cheap) Aspire. It fell down -once- from a bit more than a meter. And already nearly broke of one of its edges.
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It's showing up the fundamental flaw in late stage capitalism. That wind far will be profitable, just not quite as profitable as selling more oil. So someone should build it, someone looking to take a slice of the oil companies' cake.
But they can't, because it needs a lot of capital to build. Investors won't put the money on if they can make more with oil, and if the politicians that the oil companies bought are going to block it anyway.
The market has failed to optimize and deliver a better solution. Capita
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The second is the largest barrier right now. Not a single state has tight enough regulations on solar installers that any sane person is going to let them near the roof they rely on to keep their family
Re: They didn't walk away from it (Score:2)
There's a lot of reasons you won't see any mass migration to grid-disconnected solar panels.
For one, the physics don't pencil out. Especially accounting for electrification of appliances/cars most single family homes don't have enough roof to power themselves in peak use months, even factoring in very expensive battery storage. You can get closer if you have several acres of land to build a large ground based installation with appropriate setbacks, but then you've flipped the problem on its head... in non p
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However, the utilities claim that they lose money on net metering customers. And they probably are because they are forced to essenti
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In a few years, prices will be close to zero.
There is so much ongoing in solar research and production, it is surely amazing.
If the US had not those retarded anti China import taxes, you would get a decent solar installation for an Apple and an Egg.
Check https://www.bluesunpv.com/ [bluesunpv.com] for example. Or just hopp on Alibaba.
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You are correct that if FPL or Duke asks for $75-100/month, it will be political calamity. But that's approximately the cost to run the grid
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I'd have to get permission both from
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Having laws that force you to be on the grid is pretty arsine.
And the US of Arsiness is the only country I am aware off that has such laws.
The only grid in Germany, where you are kind of forced to be connected too, is the sewage grid.
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Solve that issue and you would see people disconnecting from the grid in large numbers.
Then they'll just make it illegal. They'll cite the poorly installed walmart panels that went up in flames due to bad connectors or whatever it was and outlaw panels on your roof as a fire risk. Or maybe they'll just make permitting and insurance so expensive that it might as well be illegal.
Solar panels on non-remote residential roofs don't really make sense at a societal level anyway until we have covered all of the car parks, all of the canals, etc etc. The maintenance access issue makes it expensive and
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That's the fundamental problem that
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How much would the utility company solve for that "minimal connection" of which you speak?
I do not speak of a "minimal connection" as I'm proposing that the home meet all electrical codes where the PV+battery is defined as a backup generator. That means "full size" electrical service, and where I live that's apparently between 150 to 250 amps. I've seen old homes with 60 amp service under a grandfather clause, and homes with higher current service because it's a large home with a separate meter for a geothermal heat pump. What I speak of is a "minimally used connection".
Because, in the most extreme case, if everybody had their own solar system. how would the utility company recoup the billions of dollars spent building generators that are sitting idle for the rare occasion where they are needed.
If PV+battery gets to
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The fixed costs of providing that grid infrastructure are about $30/month in areas where most properties are connected to the grid.
That is absurd.
In Germany it is 5.
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If I'm to believe the utilities the problems of unreliable power is because of laws that encourage homeowners to back feed electricity to the grid. One such incentive is favorable rates on the electricity they back feed to the utility. If higher connection fees mean these people go off-grid then that's beneficial to the utility in providing reliable and low cost electricity. It looks to me like everyone could win on this.
If the utility companies are to be believed, the charging of electric cars (which would increase electric usage by 20% if every car were electric) would also cause power to be unreliable. Apparently adding 20% more power to the grid or consuming 20% more power makes the grid unreliable. If that's the case, the grid is just unreliable. What about an exceptionally hot period?
Feeding electricity back into the grid is a problem because the electricity companies are forced to overpay for it. If they've c
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You've stated the problem yourself. A few decades ago, 60 or 100amp service was common. Now people have 150 - 250 amp service but no money has been invested in the grid.
That's not been my experience. Admittedly I've lived through a few floods, wind storms, ice storms, and tornadoes to see plenty of forced upgrades to the electrical system. I recall reading somewhere that the old wooden utility poles were expected to last 80 years. I don't know how accurate that is but when they fall over due to storm damage, or just chipped away by time and wind, they tend to be replaced by engineered lumber poles or some kind of metal pole. My guess is that these will last much longer
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Newer poles aren't a grid upgrade.
Yes and no. Newer poles mean poles built to last longer and to replace poles weakened by age and wear. I thought it was implied that there would be larger wires to go with the new poles but I guess I need to be more explicit in the future.
The last few miles are, in new communities, underground.
Sure. Because of the recent storms where I live knocking down power lines I'm seeing efforts to bury existing overhead lines. Do I need to point out that the buried lines would almost certainly be of larger capacity than the overhead lines they replace? Maybe they don
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90% of Germanies solar power is on private owned roofs.
What maintenance costs are you talking about?
Solar roofs have no maintenance needs, unless something gets broken in a storm.
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There are plenty of manufactures that sell simple 500W - 650W panels and a small suitcase sized portable battery, in the 1kWh - 2kWh range.
The battery has some sockets and some USB charging ports. You can get that in various sizes.
With absurd high household power demand many US house holds have, solar is quite expensive if you really want to go off grid. And it is expensive if you have an on grid solution, because it is more complicated to set up.
Here in Thailand many people simply go off grid, as it is che
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Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Informative)
A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen
Widespread tariffs are a good approximation of a national sales tax. Prices going up on almost everything, with the government collecting taxes. Might as well be a sales tax.
It's not just tariffs (Score:2, Informative)
This is something called the Overton window where you are trying to change what the acceptable political discourse is. You will periodically see Republican politicians suggest a national sales tax. It's extremely unpopular for obvious reasons but
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it'll be a national sales tax
A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen (although I'd be in favor -- consumption taxes are better than production taxes).
It's not clear that a sales tax is regarded as a direct tax that would be subject to the apportionment rule. Past Supreme Court rulings support the idea that a sales tax would be an indirect tax that is not subject to the apportionment rule and therefore would be already legal under the Taxing and Spending Clause. Of course, that's assuming that stare decisis still exists, which is increasingly not true with the current Supreme Court.
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I'm sure changing the birthright citizenship should also require a constitutional amendment but here we are. If no one in any kind of power is willing to tell Trump "No, you can't do that." then what does it really require for him to do literally anything?
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If I, as a European, travel to America, lease a car, and proceed to cause a traffic accident in said car, can the American cops arrest me? Can an American judge sentence me to pay for the accident? Am I under their jurisdiction by virtue of being in America?
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A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen (although I'd be in favor -- consumption taxes are better than production taxes).
An actual sales tax would require a constitutional amendment, perhaps. But I don't think that's what the OP was saying. If you drive up the cost of energy, it has a similar economic effect to a national sales tax. The same if you put tariffs on just about everything. You're right it's not strictly a sales tax especially since it's based on cost, not final sales price, but a sales tax is still a good analogy for those who aren't very familiar with these things.
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Either these rich folks are on some 3D chess thing
Musk said that in ten years, Tesla will make way more money selling robots than cars.
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The companies selling robots will be Chinese.
Perhaps Tesla will sell some, too.
I never looked into a Tesla car company (or video of). But Chinese cars, e.g. BYD etc. are 90% and more build by robots.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
Equating Democrats and Republicans is laughable at this point. You can shut up now.
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You do have a point.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
And somehow the false equivalence of "they're both equally bad" always seems to be coupled to "so I voted for the face eating leopards".
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Both you and rsilvergun both seem to be under the impression that voting for anything other than Republican will solve all of the issues. It will not.
Both sides are for taking your resources from you to do things that you don't want to be done. One party chooses Lawful Evil and the other party chooses Chaotic evil. Most people just don't want to vote for evil. Granted, not all evil is equal; but voting for evil is still voting for evil.
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Both you and rsilvergun both seem to be under the impression that voting for anything other than Republican will solve all of the issues. It will not.
No, this is black and white puritanical thinking: everything is divided into good and bad. If you are not above sin then you are bad, i.e. damned to hell. Steal an apple to feed your starving family. Theft is a sin and you're going to hell. Murder someone to steal their wallet? Theft and murder are sins and you're going to hell.
Outcome is the same either way
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The Dems being kinda shitty does not mean that the Republicans can not be much worse. This is not binary.
Really? I am too stoopid to know that.
If you have two ways to die, one takes a few hours and the other takes a few minutes, do you choose the longer suffering or the quick death? The quick death involved horrific things being done to you while the long death is a death from deprivation.
Seriously, which death do you choose? (living is NEVER offered as an option)
We are so screwed (Score:2)
We are so screwed.
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Well that depends on screwer or screwew, but I agree we are totally fouked either way.
JoshK.
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Then Wael Sawan... (Score:2)
Then Wael Sawan will say he got trumped and "wants his life back." And then cry with $10-million in salary to the bank. Oils well that ends well...
JoshK.
I like to blame Trump too but... (Score:2)
I love a good Trump bash, but this has nothing to do with Trump or even the USA government. For over a year there have been massive pressures placed on oil companies who were pushing a green agenda (most predominantly Shell and bp), not by governments, but by shareholders. Shell and bp were both massively trailing major oil company rivals in the stock market and investors were looking for blood. So blood they got.
- Both Shell and bp recently replaced their CEOs, Shell end of 2022, bp end of 2023.
- Shell bai
Trump's Rage and Revenge Comeback Tour (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who says this is OK chooses the blue pill. Those who think they are immune to real world results will be blindsided. The police and firefighters in New York are already finding that out because Trump wants to end funding for 9/11 first responders after they endorsed him. The energy companies who made rational plans including renewables and supported Republicans in any way are in the same situation.
Not only is the economy going to take a nose dive, day to day existence will massively be degraded. Big chunks of the government will be shut down with no planning. The ripple effects will be enormous, and if combined with dumb-ass tariffs will break large segments of American life. Things will become radically dysfunctional sooner rather then later.
Re:Trump's Rage and Revenge Comeback Tour (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are allegations that offshore wind turbines are producing infrasound that may harm whales and other wildlife.
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Well,
you could simply put a microphone on them and check if they actually produce infra sound.
And then again: you could catch some fish, put them into a big pool/basin and check if they suffer from infra sound.
Allegations ... lolz.
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Indeed. In addition to the project already being in trouble, it's called CYA for investors, who will now think it's logical to walk away.
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"I understand that people are sayin this Okian Warrior fellow is a nasty, nasty terrible person who nobody, but nobody, should believe, believe you me... why just the other day, one of my supporters, one of my greatest supporter, came to me with tears in his eyes, a great huge tower of a man, reduced to tears, mind you, by the very terrible horrendous, nasty, nasty things that this Okian Warrior has been saying, that people are all talking about, just nasty, I tell you nasty..."
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All the negative environmental impacts are due to the *CONSTRUCTION* of the turbine platforms, which requires pile driving and lots of ships. Not due to operation.
The idea that the cables carring electricity may be a threat is worth checking into, as they are something that is not needed by ships an oil platforms and all the other things we put in the ocean. Though I suspect it is not measurable, and we already have cables carrying far more electricity installed underwater some places.