Billions of American taxpayer dollars allocated to the green energy projects by the Biden administration are not delivering success as promised. In a blow to the Biden’s green energy goals, two offshore wind energy projects came to a halt with over $5 billion in impairment.
On Wednesday (November 1), world’s largest offshore wind developer Orsted announced that they are halting the construction work on two New Jersey offshore wind energy projects – Ocean 1 and Ocean 2 – due to mounting costs and delays in the supply chain. Reuters reported that the impairments from the two projects had surged above $5.6 billion.
The story wrote that the company’s decision to stop working on the projects is the combined effect of a storm of interest rate hikes, supply chain delays, and rising inflation. Ironically, it was out of the Inflation Reduction Act that the Biden administration allocated nearly $370 billion to clean energy projects.
Major developers, including Orsted, have argued that they do not have access to nearly enough cash for the massive build-out.
It is not clear what stopped the Biden admin from providing Orsted the money they needed for making the projects work. But the news of Orsted’s exit from the projects caused its stocks to fall by 22%, which is a six-year low for the Danish company, as reported in media.
The Washington Examiner wrote that the projects’ failure has threatened the Biden administration’s target of generating 30 GW of energy via offshore wind development by 2030. The story pointed at the foreseen failure of the projects by Orsted and even the risk of the company’s projects shut down completely in case the federal government failed to provide them the funds needed for the projects.
On social media, conservatives mocked the failure of the NJ projects, tagging the state’s governor Phil Murphy.
Governor Murphy went on to slam Orsted for giving up on the projects. PBS station WHYY reported:
On hearing the news, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy called the decision “outrageous” and questioned Orsted’s competence.
Biden’s vision, or lack thereof, for the country’s energy needs have been criticized by conservatives as damaging for the country. In an opinion piece published in The Washington Examiner on Wednesday (November 1), Mark Miller & Isaiah McKinney wrote that Biden’s proposed “Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule” would slow down or entirely stop major infrastructure and energy projects of the country. Arguing that the proposed rule essentially tries to impose California-style radical environmental agenda on the whole nation, the authors questioned its legality and wrote:
Biden could tell his administration to withdraw the rule before it forces bad California environmental policies onto the rest of the nation.