Some people oppose industrial offshore development of wind farms because they will harm their ocean view. Some oppose them because they will result in higher electricity rates.
Others oppose them because they will hurt commercial fishing, resulting in the destruction of not only our ocean floor and its ecosystem but have a deadly impact to countless bugs, bats, and fish. Along the Atlanta coast, offshore wind farms can and will have an impact on the Endangered North Atlantic Right Whale of which there are fewer than 400 left with only around 100 breeding females.
Americans in general should oppose offshore wind farms and solar farms because they will ultimately destroy our way of life and the future of our children and their children for no other reason than to enrich the pockets of the world’s left-wing elite.
With its Environmental Impact Statement still in the early stage, Virginia’s Dominion Power proposed renewable energy projects already has the enthusiastic endorsement of not only the Biden Administration, but Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and the left-wing Democrats controlling both houses in the General Assembly. Threats to an endangered whale isn’t going to slow as long as long as there are massive world-wide economic forces positioned to earn substantial profits from Virginia’s destruction. As usual the peasants be dammed!
The Virginia State Corporation Commission, under orders from the far left General Assembly to approve the offshore development of wind farms proposed by Dominion Power, has estimated the all-in consumer cost of the project at more than $37 billion which they claim will account for about a third of the $807 per year for a residential customer to purchase 1,000 kWh per month by 2030, an increase to just under 60%. These estimates however are not realistic. The average residential household uses well above 1,100 kWh every month.
Left-wing Democrats are also responsible for the vast majority of other decision that will drive up your future electric bill such as the cost of 970 megawatts of new natural gas that will be needed by 2024 to address what Dominion characterizes as “probable reliability issues” from the so-called renewable energy, and the retirement of coal-fired plants. Additional costs consumers will bear include the plans to remove coal ash, to place hundreds of miles of residential tap lines underground, and various demand management programs where customer A pays customer B to use less power; along with the cost of gaining new 20 year operating licenses for Dominion’s four nuclear reactors.
Then there are those mandates from the 2018 Ratepayer Bill Transformation Act, aka the Grid Transformation Act, which includes solar, a broadband program subsidized by taxpayers, even more demand management, and a planned pump storage facility to provide 300 megawatts of backup fossil fuels to keep the lights on when the “renewables” aren’t working.
And last but not least, consumers can also blame democrats for the new energy-related taxes that will be added to electric bills for both Dominion and Appalachian Power Company customers. This one, tiny at first but destined to grow, will create a fund to redistribute income from one segment of the population to another to pay for the electric bills of low income consumers. Of course, you will never see the words “Percentage of income Payment Program on your statement – we mustn’t embarrass customers who can’t pay their bill. At least the left-wing Democratic controlled General Assembly capped this hidden tax at $125 million a year. But like all socialist programs it will never go away – only grow as more and more Virginias need help with their bill.
And let’s not forget that Dominion will be working to build the solar farm in stages that will produce a mere 880 megawatts of power per stage, adding continuous costs to consumers. Then there is the thousands of megawatts of new solar, battery storage, the cost of retiring coal plants early, along with the new carbon tax Virginians will pay as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which I believe went into effect in September of this year.
The carbon tax starts at $2.39 for every 1,000 kWh of electricity use, for all customers. Dominion will use the $170 million it collects annually to buy carbon allowances, which will end up in the hands of state bureaucrats for more spending programs. According to the SCC order, imposing this tax alone could cost customers $3 billion over a couple of decades. And we all know it won’t stop there.
All in all, the new generation sources, the amount of energy generated when renewables actually work, their initial cost and all-in cost shown above, including financing and profits over time turned an estimated $45 million in capital costs into $100.6 million in customer payments. Excited?
You do the math – offshore wind will cost $7 million per constructed megawatt, solar will cost about half that at $3.7 million per megawatt, and the natural gas generation less than $2 million per megawatt. The disparity is even worse, in reality, because solar and wind are unreliable, intermittent power produced by wind and solar will still require fossil fuels to keep the power on.
This energy transformation has been largely under the radar for most Virginians, and it is not an accident that most of the costs are obscured by claims that these steps are necessary to prevent a world-wide catastrophe from carbon emissions.
What about the catastrophe of people having to choose between electricity and food?
Source: Dominion Green Energy Costs Grow Again; New Electricity Tax is Leading Edge of Rising Energy Costs and; Could Vineyard Wind Challenge Impact Dominion’s Virginia Project? by Stephen Haner, Senior Fellow for State and Local Tax Policy at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Policy.
