via Mish Talk:
Windmill Fiasco
New Green Deal proponents, please make notes.
Falmouth spent $10 Million on Wind Turbines. Now it’s shut down for an amusing (to outsiders) reason.
Democrats are pushing a Green New Deal to end the use of fossil fuels and rely entirely on renewable energy. The Cape Cod town of Falmouth, Mass., offers a cold gust of reality on such ambitions with its experience on a $10 million wind-energy investment.
In 2009 and 2011, Falmouth broke ground on two wind turbines on 314 acres of city land next to the wastewater-treatment facility and dog pound. It paid for the first turbine with a $5 million, 20-year municipal bond, and it received $5 million in federal stimulus money to build the second. Falmouth planned to sell some of the energy it generated to the electrical grid of utility company Eversource, formerly known as NStar, so the city anticipated the turbines would generate $1 million to $2 million in annual profit.
Residents quickly grew disillusioned. The turbines rose nearly 400 feet, and light flickered eerily through the blades, which whirled in a circle big enough for a 747. Barry and Diane Funfar, who lived fewer than 1,700 feet away, began suffering from headaches.
Ms. Funfar struggled to sleep, and her husband’s heart started to pound. “The problems were unbelievable,” Ms. Funfar says. “Barry couldn’t live with them. He was bothered every minute [the turbines] were running. I was bothered, too.”
Shut Down as a Public Nuisance
Here’s the incredible bottom line kicker to this story.
- In 2015 the Massachusetts Appeals Court ordered Falmouth to turn off one of its turbines, ruling that it lacked proper permitting.
- In 2017 Barnstable County Judge Cornelius Moriarty ordered both turbines shut down as a public nuisance.
- It will cost between $1 million and $2 million to dismantle and remove them.
- Since that violated the deal, the town of 32,000 is on the hook for another $5 million
Death of a California Dream
Next on the list, (AOC please take notes), Jerry Brown’s Bullet-Train Fiasco Shatters a California Dream.
A decade ago California voters approved a $10 billion bond measure to build a 520-mile high-speed train that would supposedly take riders from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes.
The Obama Administration chipped in $3.5 billion on the condition the first 160-mile segment be built in the San Joaquin Valley district of Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, a longtime bullet-train supporter who provided a critical vote for ObamaCare.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown made the train his special legacy project, his contribution at taxpayer expense to the illusion of stopping climate change. His people sent letter after letter claiming that our editorials were mistaken.
Cost projections for the train have soared to around $80 billion amid litigation, engineering challenges and ordinary government morass. Private investors have run the other way. The state rail authority has spent more than $5 billion acquiring and destroying hundreds of properties but not yet laid tracks. Taxpayers have lost patience, and [Governor] Newsom stated the obvious on Tuesday that “there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA.”
Liberals envision that the bullet train will someday turn Fresno and Merced into Silicon Valley suburbs and ease the Bay Area’s housing shortage. But this too is a dream. As economic consultants William Grindley and Bill Warren document in a recent study, a worker who lives in Fresno would spend 10 hours and 20 minutes each day commuting to San Jose at a cost of $154 round trip—assuming no subsidies.
Two New Green Deals Flushed Down the Toilet
There you have it, two absurd “new green deals”, before AOC even coined the term, both flushed down the toilet. This will be the norm.
Unfortunately, If you believe such failures will stop anybody, you are mistaken.
Expect this battle cry: If only we spent $100 trillion, these projects would have been successful.
Not Joking
I am not joking about $100 trillion.
AOC “New Green Deal” is Stunningly Absurd, Far More Ridiculous Than Expected.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock