It is misleading to characterize forcing them to undergo the standard environmental review process as "canceling". This solar project was given a special waiver to skip expensive environmental reviews that everyone else is required to go through because of close political ties to the Biden administration. If these environmental reviews are too onerous then maybe we should eliminate them.

Clearly, no one believes these environmental reviews serve a real purpose. Both Democrats and Republicans will allow you to skip them for a sufficiently large bribe. Which suggests the true purpose of such reviews.

People who support the current administration don't want people to read about the harm they are causing.

Flag abuse has become rampant. Use /new and /active for a better experience.

You did not noticed HN is 100% MAGA now? Everybody here thinks they are a new Peter Thiel. What other reason could be?

I hadn't considered it but even if it is a pretense at least the reason actually makes sense? Ship-borne drones have become a significant issue and you could pretty easily screen them with offshore wind farms.

They could've cited "owned the libs" and it wouldn't have made a difference. Republican congress tacitly supports all of this.

It’s unfortunate many people are able to see through this to the blatant corruption. Energy independence and national security is renewable energy. All sorts of diverse energy sources are good. But we don’t like that.

I feel bad for ruining someone's dreams, but you really have no idea how wrong you are.

They're stuck there for four year terms, and in the case of SCOTUS life, are they not?

Even if a Dem is elected in '28, who is going to make a multi-year investment with the chance that JD Vance/Trump Jr/MTG could be elected in '32?

They aren’t leaving until someone forces them to do so. They aren’t going to accept any election results that they don’t like they have already proven that.

Trump was anti offshore wind farms since before his first term. He claimed they caused brain cancer or something foolish like that.

It sounds like “national security” is the legal justification they’re using to do an end-run around Congress, just like the justifications they’ve used to implement tariffs and which underpin a bunch of their EOs.

It's about time a US administration is brave enough to tackle real national security concerns: windmill cancer, completing the White House ballroom, and Antifa! /s

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You know who looks at the economics of wind turbines? Companies that build wind turbines. The fact that these farms were all under construction means they pencil out just fine.. there's such bizarre strains of concern trolling on clean energy topics.

You say economics instead of emotion, but your last sentence is emotion. If capex is your concern, explain the purpose of canceling an almost-complete farm. If energy breakevens are your concern, explain how this breakevens compares against, e.g. oil liquids.

> Let’s look at the economics instead of emotionally

The people who invested money into this already did.

I live near both wind turbines and oil/gas fracking sites in Colorado. The wind turbines are far less obtrusive. Fracking sites produce a lot of noise and they try to hide them with these giant walls that look like a post-apocalyptic fort. On top of that, because they don't disclose their fracking fluids you always kind of have ground water contamination near your home on the back of your mind.

I'm not even against fracking but the alternatives to wind and solar are more a public nuisance to live around.

> CapEx break even is estimated 7-10 years.

> estimated break-even just on energy to produce the unit is 5-8 months

Those are really good numbers, a good argument for why they're being built.

What alternative powerplant would you recommend that has a shorter breakeven, doesn't consume oil, and is attractive to look at?

OTOH I think wind farms are pretty and pump-jacks are ugly.

Our biases shine through.

I love to look at the economics. The payback periods don’t look terrible. More importantly the market should decide what is good or not. I am all for removing subsidies but let the market decide the best path forward.

I live near one (no-USA) and honestly it doesn't bother me. It's a small price to pay to avoid ever-decreasing foreign-sourced oil/gas and insanely over-budget/over-schedule nuclear.

> CapEx break even is estimated 7-10 years

I don’t think this is unique to wind farms.

> thousands of liters of lubrication oil

That's 202,884 teaspoons!

I was Landman, too. Good show.

I do not understand why people think it’s exciting to drop into the comments and pointlessly lie to defend their favorite dictator. We know and you know that you didn’t think wind farms were ugly until it became necessary to defend Trump’s obsession; what do you hope to gain by pretending otherwise?