This letter is in response to the letter by Dr. Spickler published May 16. The author says that the Caesar Rodney Institute’s claim that offshore wind cost will be 3.5 times or more higher than the University of Delaware plan suggests is based on a few scary examples. It’s not. The Maryland Public Utility Commission negotiated the purchase of all of the electricity generated by the proposed Skipjack Wind Project of Ørsted, the major Danish offshore wind generator, at $124 per megawatt hour that grows to $160 per megawatt hour when the annual 2% price increase is considered.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration provides accurate estimates of providing electric power from different technologies, and the data shows that offshore wind is three to four times as expensive as land-based wind, solar and natural gas, all of which are presently around $40 per megawatt hour.
Our calculations reflect an annual increase of $425 per household electricity cost, and literally thousands of dollars more for commercial and industrial customers if Delaware actually purchased the SkipJack electricity.
Delaware presently uses 23.7% of renewable energy per year of its total consumption. About 2% is produced locally and nearly 22% is solar/wind energy purchased from other states at a higher price. Due to the carbon tax assigned to Delaware’s lone coal-fired utility and to the in-state clean natural gas producers, the result is making these producers not competitive in selling their electricity to the PJM grid. In the last six years, the amount of locally produced electricity has dropped from 73% to 31% presently. On its way to 2%.
The electricity not made in Delaware is bought from other states, with more than 60% made with coal and natural gas. Very poor policy.
Caesar Rodney Institute’s research has consistently warned of the other potential unresearched issues with offshore wind, including damage to migrating whales and birds, beach tourism industry, decline in real estate values and rental values, dislocation of millions of horseshoe crabs (since Skipjack project is directly atop the Horseshoe Crab Reserve), elimination of commercial fishing in lease areas, and trouble with Coast Guard search-and-rescue operations.
The author suggests that it’s worth having offshore wind turbines to lessen the “strange weather patterns with high winds, greater heat, rising seas and weird snowstorms.” We suggest that everyone visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website and see for yourself that the varying weather patterns are very largely driven by alternating El Nino and El Nina Pacific Ocean upwelling of warm water (El Nino) or the reverse upwelling of cooler water (El Nina), having very little to do with additions of atmospheric CO2.
The energy strategy for Delaware should not include too-expensive ocean wind energy and should focus on land wind, solar, clean natural gas, advanced nuclear and natural gas with carbon capture.
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