Not a good few days run for the wizards of wind as far as news goes.

…lemme wipe this wind green grin off my face before I continue…

Hard on the heels of the EV sales collapse major automakers are dealing with, compounded by the UAW strike, the bad news in the renewable energy quarter has everyone wondering, “Does Biden bail this bunch out next?”

Legit question. Think about what the administration has dumped into automakers in their push for EVs and how it’s shaking out so far – nobody’s buying what they’re selling.

Ford assured investors last week that its generous deal with the United Auto Workers wouldn’t threaten its profitability. Maybe. The same can’t be said of its electric vehicles, which lost $3.1 billion during the first nine months of this year.

…For now, auto makers are simply pumping the brakes on their electric-vehicle investments. Tesla recently paused plans for a new factory in Mexico. General Motors CEO Mary Barra last week scrapped the company’s electric-vehicle production goals, citing flagging demand.

Honda on Oct. 25 scuttled plans to manufacture low-cost electric vehicles with GM. EVs are “a pretty brutal space,” Mercedes CFO Harald Wilhelm said the next day. “I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully sustainable for everybody.”

Ford joined the pileup and postponed $12 billion in planned electric-vehicle investment, stating that buyers weren’t willing to pay a premium over gasoline cars—even with a $7,500 federal tax credit and hefty state subsidies.

“The customer is going to decide what the volumes are,” Ford CFO John Lawler said.

Has the company checked with its regulators about that?

But the push for EVs, drowning in government largesse and mandates as it already is, has nothing on the wind energy sector, which has state and national governments across the globe literally betting their energy security and financial farm on a technology that hasn’t lived up to its billing yet. And those were during the halcyon days of big money and everyone loving the Green. There was literally a Green light GO for every wind project that could be dreamed up with no budget too big and no objections too enormous or emotional – or even rational – that they couldn’t be bulldozed in the name of the existential threat we all faced from a boiling planet.

A funny thing happened on the way to being saved by the blow – reality checked the advance, and hard.

In the US, wind has been sketchy. What’s keeping the lights on is what has been keeping the lights on, like, forever: natural gas, nuclear, and coal.

Last February, I posted about German wind giant Siemens Gamesa doubling their losses due to expanding warranty claims. By August, those losses were up six-fold from previous years. With inflationary pressures on top of warranty issues, Siemens is looking at taking losses if it delivers already manufactured turbines to certain customers.

Siemens Energy sees €4.5b hit, wind losses prompt review

Siemens Energy AG launched a strategic review of its wind power business as problems with its turbines are expected to cause a €4.5 billion (US$5 billion) net loss in one of industrial Germany’s biggest debacles.

…In addition, the company detailed issues in its offshore business, where higher product costs and ramp-up challenges incurred charges of €600 million during the fiscal third quarter through June. The higher outlays mean Siemens Energy is making a loss on certain contracts if customers take delivery.

The company announced a lifeline from the German government last week.

…Those losses will doubtless grow, and anyone who thinks Washington won’t give auto makers another bailout should think again. Last week Munich-based Siemens Energy, one of the world’s top wind manufacturers, said the German government is prepared to extend as much as €16 billion (or $16.9 billion) in state guarantees to rescue it.

The news last week wasn’t any better for General Electric. GE posted $1B loss in its off-shore division, is forecasting the same for next year, and has decided to spin the whole renewable energy arm off into a separate division.

General Electric Co. expects its offshore-wind operations to post annual losses of about $1 billion for this year and next as the industry struggles with rising costs.

…[CEO] Culp’s comments come as offshore-wind developers face increasing challenges including supply-chain disruptions, rising costs for components and higher interest rates. That’s likely to delay some projects and push out demand for turbines….

The Germans are worried that cheaper Chinese wind turbines will replace their home grown or EU turbine manufacturers simply because they can make them cheaper – a lot cheaper.

…German leaders worry that Chinese manufacturers will take over wind manufacturing as they did solar-panel production a decade ago and are now doing with electric vehicles. China boasts 10 of the world’s 15 largest turbine manufacturers and can sell turbines at half the price of European manufacturers, owing largely to its cheap coal power.

“These technologies will be produced anyway, and the question is whether Europe will have to import them,” German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said Friday. That may be true, but developers in Europe and the U.S. are scotching wind projects as rising costs and interest rates are making them unprofitable.

Think about that for a moment, Current conditions for wind farms are “Making them UNPROFITABLE” with large government financials underpinnings already in place…and they want more cha-ching.

There’s a business model for ya.

But if it gives any of them any comfort, things aren’t looking so rosy for the Chinese either right now, even with cheap coal and labor. The pain in the wind industry seems to be a growing global malady, as the nose-diving profits of the world’s largest wind turbine company can attest. The Chinese problem is almost the polar opposite of the US/EU problem in that competition is driving prices down in Asia, and that’s chomping away at bottom lines.

Top Wind Firm Profits Tumble 98% in New Blow to Clean Energy

Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., the largest wind-turbine maker, said third-quarter profit tumbled in another blow to a renewables sector reeling from the impact of lower prices even as demand jumps.

The producer’s net income fell 98% to 9.4 million yuan ($1.29 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, the company said Thursday in a statement…

…Asia’s largest economy is accelerating deployment of renewable energy as it works to curb emissions and meet rising electricity demand. Though installations are rising, competition is intensifying among China’s wind turbine producers and pushing prices lower.

Also, state subsidies the Chinese government gave to renewables expired in 2021, so these firms are on their own. They don’t get many bailouts on local levels, either, because regional governments want breaks back from the companies before they’ll cut them any checks.

So when subsidies go away, it becomes a dog-eat-dog world for the Green schemers in wind. Isn’t that funny? That makes it almost like a business.

Consumers in the United Kingdom are also waking up to what this is costing, has cost them already, and what it will cost them if renewable firms have their way begging at the government trough. The difference on handouts this go-around would be that none of this is shiny new anymore. In fact, it’s downright dingy, it stinks, citizens can’t stand the reek already, and what wind companies particularly are demanding going forward is going to flip them right over the edge.

The case for wind power was built upon a myth
We keep being told that it will continue to get cheaper. Now the truth has been revealed

Wind is already the cheapest form of power and will save us a fortune in future. We know this because the green energy lobby keeps telling us so. But it is hard to square with the words of Tom Glover, chair of energy company RWE’s UK arm, last week.

No more offshore wind farms will be built, he said, unless the Government hikes the guaranteed long-term prices offered to their operators by as much as 70 per cent.

The energy “market” is not really much of a market at all, not when it comes to green energy. The Government underwrites wind and solar through “contracts for difference” – guaranteeing operators a minimum “strike price”, rising with inflation, for every megawatt-hour of electricity they generate over 15 years.

The trouble is that wind farm developers will no longer accept the strike prices offered. Last time the Government held an auction for the right to build offshore wind farms, in September, it received not a single bid.

The maximum strike price the Government offered was £44 per MWh. According to RWE it won’t receive any bids until this is raised to between £65 and £75.

In the first place, that’s extortion.

In the second place, let me refresh your memory just how above-board the company RWE is. They’re the German energy company that is reportedly busy trying to permanently disable their nuclear plants so they can’t be restarted.

Because they own something making them big, BIG money right now, which the German government has just removed production restrictions on.

…They also own the nuclear plants AND?

Lignite coal mines. The same mines that the German government has just blown the lid off of for production – Katy bar the door.

The third piece of the puzzle is the German people, who have been getting more and more vocal that they want nothing to do with any more “dirty” coal – that’s what renewables were supposed to phase out, right? They’re tired of insane electricity prices, they want the heat and lights on when they want them on, and who were the damn idiots who shut down perfectly fine reactors to begin with?

Rumors are bubbling up to people in the business that RWE has already made a move to protect its nascent goldmine in the coal shaft.

Still waiting on government approval to begin dismantling the reactors, RWE has spiked the rods in one of them, just in case anyone had any plans to fire those bad boys back up.

That’s how concerned about Gaia these Green guardians of the Earth really are.

Here in the States, does POTATUS force feed bail-outs for a “transition” we’re already paying for that nobody wanted to begin with?

…Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford observed in an interview with the New York Times this month that electric vehicles have become collateral damage in a broader culture war: “Some of the red states say this is just like the vaccine, and it’s being shoved down our throat by the government, and we don’t want it.”

He’s right. Progressives aren’t only force-feeding the green-energy transition. They are pushing their supposedly superior cultural values on a public that doesn’t share them. If government mandates backfire on auto makers, taxpayers will be made to pay for repairing the industry’s wreckage.

And I don’t agree with the Ford chair – you can only be “collateral damage” if you were unintentionally a victim.

Ford, the other automakers, every last wind and solar company who jumped in the second the mandates and government welfare checks started rolling out?

You guys were the foot soldiers and arms manufacturers of the war, dude.

Don’t come crying to us when you get burned by the consumer nuke.