You know – that once-in-a-million, never gonna happen, IGNORE THE DENIERS AND SKEPTICS scenario?
Yeah.
About that.
Several things have happened and flown under the radar during the past week in the wind farm industry that bear serious watching. Actually, not just wind but renewables, period, as far as the United States goes.
A little over a week ago, it was learned that a company called EEW American Offshore Structures in Paulsboro, New Jersey, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
EEW American Offshore Structures Inc., a wind monopile manufacturing company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Its subsidiary, EEW AOS Paulsboro Urban Renewal LLC, also filed for Chapter 11.
Monopiles are the massive vertical, cylindrical steel tubes driven into the ocean floor to support the wind turbines.
Monopile foundations are the single vertical, steel cylinder pile driven into the seabed to support the wind turbine generator. They are also the entry points for the inter-array cables that transmit the generated power from the turbines to the offshore substations.
As this little video illustrates, it’s not just an up to 300′ long steel tube that goes into the ocean floor.
EEW American Offshore Structures has been in Paulsboro for six years. The rodential former governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, crowed about dumping an unholy ton of money into the company’s five-hundred-thousand-square-foot facility.
…Let us start in New Jersey. EEW American Offshore Structures filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy on April eighth. This was the first monopile manufacturing facility ever built in the United States. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced a two hundred fifty million dollar investment in the Paulsboro Marine Terminal back in twenty twenty. It was called the largest industrial offshore wind investment in the country at the time. At full buildout… five hundred thousand square feet of production space. More than one hundred monopiles per year. Five hundred workers. They even built the first American-made monopile… for Orsted’s Ocean Wind project. It weighed three million pounds. It measured three hundred feet long.
Then Orsted canceled Ocean Wind One and Two. Then Shell pulled out of Atlantic Shores. Without contracted work… workers disassembled and recycled finished monopiles for scrap. Federal policy shifts removed the pipeline of future projects. A landlord eviction filing followed. And then… Chapter Eleven. That is a two hundred fifty million dollar facility… with nowhere left to go.
The size of the now-scrapped monopile for the now-scrapped Ocean Wind development was breathtaking. There were going to be 98 of them at this one wind farm alone.
New Jersey taxpayers eat it again, courtesy of the climate cult, but thank God none of these made it to the ocean floor.
The next news was far more alarming in that context.
You all might remember the running saga two summers ago of the wind turbine blade that blew apart off Nantucket at the start of the summer. It was on one of the first turbines in the water for a development called Vineyard Wind, and each turbine had three new-generation GE Vernova blades on it. These blades, which had not yet even been in service, were just in the testing phase when the folks on the island got word from fisher folks who’d been out by the project that one blade was looking a little peakish.
It actually was looking more like limp fettuccine, at least the part that was still attached, although it, too, eventually plopped into the swells and sank beneath the waves to be retrieved months later.
“GER (GE Renewables) walking away threatens the project’s very survival,” Vineyard Wind’s attorneys wrote in a filing submitted this week to the Suffolk Superior Court. The project’s failure would “leave behind a dormant wind farm graveyard. There is no viable replacement.” pic.twitter.com/eU7xDZLGAZ
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) April 11, 2026
The rest had blown apart or shredded into the water. The toxic flotsam plagued the island and surrounding states’ beaches for months afterward, with everything from small boat-sized chunks of styrofoam to itsy-bitsy, wickedly sharp shreds of fiberglass and composite laminated fibers.
The experience of dealing with the developer and GE Vernova (which also made the turbines themselves), not to mention fighting the indifference of their climate-cult-deranged governor, turned the island inhabitants from tree-hugging peaceniks to radical anti-wind types almost overnight.
The building out of Vineyard Wind, sad to say, continued, post-apologetic noises made, and some compensatory cash was handed over to the state of Massachusetts. The offshore farm now has 62 installed GE Haliade-X wind turbines for a project that cost upwards of $4.5B. It is supposed to supply 802MW of power to 400,000 MA homes and is just shy of completion.
I say ‘supposed to’ because, well, GE Renewables, the subsidiary of GE Vernova, wants out of the project. They’ve submitted their ‘We quit‘ papers.
And the developer has taken them to court for it because that ‘affordable renewable’ stuff?
Well, it actually isn’t.
And if GE Renewables isn’t picking up its part of the load, the developer can’t afford to finish the project to get the wind farm spinning.
A DORMANT WIND FARM GRAVEYARD
Vineyard Wind has completed construction of the 62-turbine wind farm southwest of Nantucket, but the future of the project appears to be very much in jeopardy.
Vineyard Wind is suing GE Renewables, the manufacturer of its turbines, to block the company from backing out of the project. Without its partner, Vineyard Wind stated in its lawsuit that the entire $4.5 billion offshore wind project is imperiled.
“GER (GE Renewables) walking away threatens the project’s very survival,” Vineyard Wind’s attorneys wrote in a filing submitted this week to the Suffolk Superior Court. The project’s failure would “leave behind a dormant wind farm graveyard. There is no viable replacement.”
The lawsuit was prompted by GE Renewables (GER) sending a termination notice to Vineyard Wind on February 27, claiming the offshore wind developer had failed to cover more than $300 million in unpaid bills. Terminating those agreements would leave Vineyard Wind unable to operate and maintain its turbines, which run on GE Renewables’ proprietary designs, technology, and software, according to the legal filing.
It’s a he-said/she-said situation, with both companies claiming the other owes them money, in addition to what Vineyard Wind is claiming as uncompensated damages for the blade blowout two years ago.
…”Separately, and in addition to ongoing commissioning efforts, substantial remediation and repair work for the (turbines) also remains,” Vineyard Wind stated in its complaint. “Not one of the 62 GER (turbines) has yet met the contractual requirements for Vineyard Wind taking them over, the line demarcating the construction and operation phases. Because of this, the Project is far from generating the electricity output contractually required to sustain its financing viability during the operation phase.”
In a statement provided to the Current, GE Vernova, the parent company of GE Renewables, said, “Unfortunately, Vineyard Wind has chosen to withhold payments for more than 18 months, totaling more than $300 million, for work performed. Consequently, GE Vernova exercised its contractual right to terminate the ongoing project agreements for non-payment. The company remains committed to the safety of the wind farm and stands by our performance and our contractual obligations. We will vigorously defend our position through the appropriate legal process.”
GE maintains they did good work, but they’re leaving.
This leaves the very real possibility that sixty-two turbines will stand like silent sentinels off the coast of Nantucket until they erode, fall apart, blow over…however they fail, unless the two companies come to some sort of accord, which seems unlikely at the moment.
Monuments to the obstinacy of government and the arrogance of the climate cult, as weather and water tear away at them, built at what cost to an environment they were sneeringly built to ‘save.’
Oh, but, Beege! Surely, you ask, there’s some plan to break them down or remove them…right?
There’s a story in that, too, you know?
The Biden administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in its infinite lack of wisdom and arrogance, waived the decommissioning bond for the project’s first 15 years.
Because, you know, these were ‘proven technologies,’ ‘sure things,’ and no one wanted the skeptics to win, or even take an inch for caution’s sake.
There was no ‘what if.’
Remember that BOEM waived the federal requirement for Vineyard Wind to post the full $191 million decommissioning bond prior to construction.
The agency allowed Vineyard Wind to defer that payment until year 15 of commercial operations.
There is no money to remove turbines if… pic.twitter.com/oHrAi59VzD
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) April 11, 2026
…There is no money to remove turbines if in fact Vineyard Wind becomes “a graveyard.”
And you thought tax breaks were an abomination. There won’t be a company to collect from in a year, let alone fifteen.
It didn’t expose the U.S. government to risk (ROBUST insurance policies), these things never break (PROVEN wind turbine technology), and the money earned selling power from those spinning turbines will pay for the rest, so it’s good to go.
…In support of this departure request, Vineyard Wind asserts that requiring decommissioning financial assurance before project construction is unnecessarily burdensome for lessees because, at that point, they have not begun receiving project income.
In addition, Vineyard Wind has identified several risk-reduction factors associated with the Project, including:
1) Robust insurance policies that cover any damages to the Project throughout the construction and operations phases, and the restoration of project operations after any catastrophic event;
2) The use of proven wind turbine technology;
3) In contrast with the conventional energy sector, the offshore wind industry’s use of longterm (20-year) PPAs with guaranteed electricity sales prices that, coupled with the consistent supply of wind energy, ensure a predictable income over the life of the Project.
BOEM agrees that these risk-reduction factors, along with our review of the Project’s projected revenue and costs, demonstrate that deferring the decommissioning financial assurance requirement until 15 years after construction does not expose the U.S. Government to undue risk.
Oh, well done.
Sixty-two of these monsters – dead in the water.
THE LARGEST TURBINE IN THE WESTERN WORLD
“The largest turbine in the western world”
Nantucket Current was the first media organization to visit Vineyard Wind’s completed GE Haliade-X turbine, the first of 62 planned for the waters southwest of the island: https://t.co/DG1U25eGQH pic.twitter.com/sy0904octu
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) October 23, 2023
WHAT IF THEY NEVER TURN FOR A SINGLE DAY?
Unconscionable malfeseance and incompetence, yeah, but all the bitchin’ about it in the world doesn’t change the fact that they are out there in the water.
There may be hope for the demise of some onshore projects in upstate New York before they ever reach the no-return point, again thanks to financial realities of unsubsidized renewables versus the good old days of green grifting.
…The last few days bring the news that apparently the majority of the remaining wind and solar electricity projects still in development in New York State are under imminent threat of cancelation. At this point the details are sketchy, and nobody is attributing the news to any named source as far as I can find. Nevertheless, the story is sufficiently widely-reported from normally reliable sources that I’m ready to give it credit.
The Albany Times-Union appears to have been the first with the story in a piece from April 12 with the headline “Clean energy projects in NY on hold as battle over costs escalates.” The gist is that the developers of some two dozen “clean energy” (wind and solar) projects in upstate New York have approached the State and demanded more money above agreed prices in order to proceed with previously contracted developments. Unless they get the additional funds, they are threatening to walk away from the projects. Excerpt:
Nearly two dozen of New York’s clean energy projects may be scrapped because they are financially impractical, a possible outcome that would exacerbate the state’s struggling efforts to meet increasing power demands while also ensuring the electric grid becomes less dependent on fossil fuels. The stalled wind and solar projects would power roughly 2 million homes, but the developers want to renegotiate state contracts to reflect tariffs and rising labor costs not factored in when their deals were struck between 2023 and early 2025. Without more revenue, the projects won’t be economically viable and will need to be canceled, according to a trade organization representing them.
What a shame the reality check didn’t come about a year sooner to spare us this debacle in the Atlantic.
It’s always the stuff they tell you can’t happen that does.
It might not be in the way you imagined, but it happens nonetheless.
GAWD, I hate these things.
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