Show notes
Ørsted and New Jersey settle their dispute over cancelled offshore wind farms, Belgium objects to a French offshore wind farm near Dunkirk, Vestas merges its technology and manufacturing divisions, a new blade root bushing repair method is patented by We4Ce, and details on NextEra's Hubbard Wind Project in Texas.
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Allen Hall: Over in the UK, and this is the only place where I think this would Obviously occur for multiple reasons. Adam Spencer, a serial thief from Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, was recently caught and sentenced after a string of burglaries and shoplifting incidents. Most notable theft, 17 tubes of Pringles potato chips, all stolen in one go.
When arrested by police, Spencer reportedly quipped, Once you pop, you can't stop. A reference to Pringle's famous advertising slogan. But Prince's crime spree went beyond just chips. He broke into the same Iceland shop twice in one morning, stealing meat and then returning a couple hours later to steal over 300 pounds worth of additional stock.
Okay this is gonna become the Pringle's defense. It has to be, right? Once you pop, you can't stop. I like it. Rosemary are we would call them potato chips in the United States, but they're called other things in other places. Are they popular in Australia?
Rosemary Barnes: No, they're they're chips in Australia.
They're crisps in the UK.
Joel Saxum: Are they popular and or would you be willing to steal 17 tubes of them?
Rosemary Barnes: I certainly wouldn't. Wouldn't steal them. It's hard to imagine how you could sneak out 17 tubes of Pringles in one go. So that's, obviously I guess they, they didn't because they were caught, but yeah, no, I think, I don't know with chips, I I don't like them particularly, but if they're there, I'll eat them and then regret it.
So I would not. I would not keep 17 tubes in my house because there's, it's hard to, It's hard to eat healthy foods while you've got Pringles available. Even if I don't like them. I don't, yeah, I guess ones you probably can't stop.
Allen Hall: A Belgian minister has joined several coastal municipalities in filing an objection against a large wind farm off the coast of Dunkirk, France. And if you remember Dunkirk, France is the place where the British removed all their coal. Troops at the beginning of world war two very famous place The plans would build 46 wind turbines barely 10 kilometers from the coast which Belgian authorities say would cause visual nuisance impact shipping routes and harm protected seabirds Belgium has been opposing this Project since 2016 has proposed an alternate location further out to sea if necessary Belgium is prepared to go to the European court to safeguard the rights of coastal residents and other stakeholders Okay, guys, so when you decide to build an offshore wind farm along your border You have to anticipate if the country or the other side is going to have some concerns about it, right?
Particularly in Dunkirk France, which is a very next to Belgium, which is quite beautiful You it's just like the coastline of New Jersey that and Virginia and everywhere else in the United States where the sight lines can't be interrupted. Six, 10 kilometers, which is six miles, right? Six miles isn't that far offshore.
Joel Saxum: How do they navigate this? I'd be the like to be the first one to say that if we're gonna take a uptime podcast field trip to visit a coastline I would much rather go to the northern coast of France than New Jersey.
Philip Totaro: You beat me to it. I was gonna say something about New Jersey.
They're not the same.
Rosemary Barnes: Have you seen the movie Dunkirk? That place is bleak. You watch the movie Dunkirk and you're like, yeah, holiday destination.
Joel Saxum: Even Rosemary knows. So Allen, I know you and I, when we were talking, I think it was when it was the Virginia wind farms, Commonwealth or something of that sort, where we were actually doing the math with the curvature of the earth and how far off the the beach, the turbines need to be if you're six feet tall before you can't see them anymore.
And they're just going to be specks out there and all this stuff. We did that. So this one, 10 kilometers off the coast, that's six miles. You'll still be able to see them fairly clear. If they've, I guess the way I see it is if they've proposed another spot, that's a little bit further out. And if it doesn't change the economics of the project too much, then I would just move it out.
And that, if that was my development decision, just make it easier because otherwise you're running into so many stakeholders that you got to have a piece and they're just going to fight and fight, they've been fighting it for eight years already.
Philip Totaro: Look at the end of the day this sort of thing happens all the time with onshore wind as well.
Somebody's got an easement in place to put a wind turbine, but it's gonna cast a shadow on the neighbor's, backyard and diminish their enjoyment of their property or some nonsense like that. So it's just buy them off and move on. At the end of the day, you're seeing
Allen Hall: France should buy Belgium.
I don't know if that's possible.
Philip Totaro: No, FRA What France is gonna do is they're gonna give a contract to Deme and you know that's gonna take care of it. And then everybody's happy. Deme is Belgian anyways, aren't they? Yeah, that's what I mean. France is gonna give a contract to DE and then they get some tax revenue off and then everybody goes home happy.
This is a, it doesn't have to be an issue. But the Belgians keep making it an issue.
Joel Saxum: If they keep delaying it, the turbines are going to get taller and taller anyways. If they would have just built it back in 2016, I think those were only six megawatt direct drives back then or something, weren't they?
Should have built it then.
Allen Hall: Over in New Jersey, speaking of New Jersey, Danish wind farm developer Orsted will pay New Jersey 125 million. To settle claims over the company's cancellation of two onshore wind farms last year. This settlement amount is just over a third of the 300 million ORSID was once required to pay in guarantees and development obligations.
The state will use the settlement funds to support investments in wind energy facilities, component manufacturing facilities, and other clean energy programs. All right, everybody. Do you think New Jersey's really going to use 125 million for clean energy investments?
Joel Saxum: It would be nice if you, if it would go into some fund that could, fund some loans or something of that sort, but I, but the trouble with this and most all other federal funds in general, regard that it's green, transparency is usually an issue.
So if they would put this up on a simple to use website that would be nice and transparent where you could take a peek at where the funds are being used. That would be fantastic. But I doubt that's going to happen.
Allen Hall: The Orsted lawyers earned their money for sure. They knocked it down by 175 million.
That's a nice job well done. Hopefully they take a percentage of that home. Still, these situations. Are going to arise again and again, and I wonder at what point will the developers stop getting involved in this like this down payment thing that the states require when the states hold all the cards and in New Jersey's case, pretty much made it untenable for Orsted to move forward on these projects.
It's feels like you're bludgeoning them and then encourage him to come over for some more bludgeoning. And there's nothing that the developer can do. They're trying to play nice. And at some point they, they're. And true New Jersey nature and some point of watching enough mobster movies It feels like they're just gotten whacked, right?
It's it is a really not a good look for New Jersey and Orsted You know from I have to give Orsted some credit here, right? That Orsted PR wise It's done a pretty good job of this.
Joel Saxum: In the article here that we're referring to they say some environmentalists have criticized the settlement as a sellout, saying the state basically gave up or gave in to Orsett.
The end of the day here, those states on the East Coast, while they're fighting and fighting, they all still say within their policies that they want to have a settlement. offshore wind as a clean energy, renewable energy source. So if they're going to, if they were going to force Orsted to pay that 300 million and keep pushing, if I was Orsted, I'd move my capital down to the next state.
I wouldn't deal with them anymore. So there's a reason.
Rosemary Barnes: But I don't understand the environmentalist angle here. Shouldn't that be. Pro wind, if they're environmentalists why are they pro New Jersey, and
Joel Saxum: It's the pro whale, or the pro bird, or, yeah. It's a really, it's a really, it's really quite a fight in the U.
S. right now.
Rosemary Barnes: The environmentalists who are opposing wind farms on the basis of whale deaths I don't, I wouldn't call them environmentalists, because there isn't any basis in fact to that. I think it's, at best, I Maybe there's some naive environmentalists in there who, love whales and don't have very good reading comprehension or something to be able to look into it a bit further,