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Power United States

Shell Walks Away From Major New Jersey Offshore Wind Farm (apnews.com) 37

Posted by BeauHD from the dead-in-the-water dept.
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 Walks Away From Major New Jersey Offshore Wind Farm More | Reply

Shell Walks Away From Major New Jersey Offshore Wind Farm

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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. They have gone out of their way to make wind a dead end by cutting off land leases and packing regulatory agencies with corrupt officials. There's too much uncertainty right now.

    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 yo

    • Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday January 31, 2025 @11:10PM (#65134183)

      took half a billion dollars at least ... from big oil.

      That's misleading. Big Oil spent half a billion during the election cycle but donated only 20% of that to Trump's campaign.

      Big Oil is the biggest investor in wind. Shell ran this project. Even Exxon, the Sith Lord of the oil industry, is investing in wind. So, I'm skeptical that Big Oil is paying Trump to destroy its own investments.

      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).

      • 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.

        • Not if there's a rebate. See: the long-dead Fair Tax.

          • Prebate not rebate.

            • 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.

              • 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%.

          • 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 l

        • 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: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Can'tNot ( 5553824 )

        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.

        • The oil companies are trying to position themselves to take over wind and solar generation so they can continue to control your energy supply and set the price for it. But since anyone with cash can make a wind or solar farm that's easier said than done. So they need to buy some time while they squeeze out competitors.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dstwins ( 167742 )
          Oil is only profitable because of the demand in that petrolium (And its various distillates) are used world wide for SOOO many things.. Wind/Solar/Hydro eat into the energy aspect of that, but since we still use petrolium for other things besides energy production, its still a good hedge.

          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.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by crow ( 16139 )

        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.

      • So, I'm skeptical that Big Oil is paying Trump to destroy its own investments.

        Elon Musk has entered the chat. He spent how much money to get a man elected who wants to nuke the EV subsidies?

        Either these rich folks are on some 3D chess thing that is beyond the comprehension to us mere mortals, or they're just so absurdly wealthy that they truly don't care if they flush some of their investments down the toilet. Kinda like the stereotype of the eccentric tycoon who just had his house redecorated and then wakes up the next morning and decides he absolutely hates everything and it all

        • 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.

      • I don't but let's just say I do. They gave Trump a $100 million dollars.

        And no a national sales tax does not require an act of Congress. You just have to keep jacking up tariffs. Which the president can do unilaterally because Congress already gave him the ability to do that. Mix in some deep deep deep spending cuts that will devastate your community and Trump can easily get the money together to give his billionaire buddies a trillion dollars of your money every year.

        Once again, look at what you pa

      • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dstwins ( 167742 )
        You can have a national sales tax in substance by virtue of the energy transportation cost, rather than one in real name. Also national sales taxes don't require a constitutional amendment, but it does require congress to approve it (which won't be difficult in this environment). But like I said, it doesn't have to be a literal one.. just a virtual one.. if every item has a practical surcharge due to increased transportation cost (Read energy costs are being passed on to the consumer), then you have a virtu

    • Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Friday January 31, 2025 @11:26PM (#65134199)

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rossdee ( 243626 )

        Don Quixote also tilted at windmills

        • 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.

        • Don Quixote was also not altogether right in the head; loco en cabeza, you might say. Hmm. Maybe that's a parallel between him and Trump.

      • I've always thought wind farms and solar panels look pretty cool and futuristic.

      • He has nothing of the sort. He's just going after it because the oil companies ordered into. Now the reason the oil companies ordered him to is that people don't like the way wind farms look. While I personally think they have a super cool futuristic look most people hate them. And rich people especially hate having them offshore because they think it's spoils their view. A single US senator spent years blocking offshore wind farms back east.

        Trump doesn't hold a grudge because he can't think straight en

    • It's a good idea to have emergency savings *every* year. But things won't move quite that quickly. So far Trump has made a lot of noise, and back off of half the things he tried to do. He did succeed in renaming the Gulf of Mexico, but so far not a whole lot else.

      The Shell project was no doubt already in trouble. Shell is just using Trump as an excuse to walk away, it's called CYA with shareholders.

      And Democrats are just as bad about spending money they don't have, as Republicans. The more the two sides yel

  • We are so screwed.

  • 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.

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