Back in July, the saga of the Vineyard Wind blade began. Manufactured by GE in Gaspé, Quebec, the massive 350 ft blades were being installed on the first turbines for the enormous project just offshore from Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.

Most everyone, including islanders, was "Yay! Clean green energy!" happily swallowing the developer's assurances that everything would always be hunky dory with the project, and, even if the unthinkable happened, why they'd signed a "good neighbor" piece of paper with the town that said clean-up was on them.

If only fairytales came true, no?

In the real world, things happen, and developers' promises don't mean squat once they've gotten what they want as far as permission to proceed.

Which is what not only Nantucket, but surrounding beaches and states are coming to find out after the failure of the brand new GE Vernova blade that fateful July morning.

In my initial post on the subject, I noted that the blade had yet even to be put into use - it was only in the testing phase.

...This thing blew apart during testing, so it was a brand-new, not-yet-operational turbine and blades.  

A Vineyard Wind turbine was undergoing testing Saturday when one of its 350-foot blades broke, a company spokesman said Tuesday. The turbine’s manufacturer, GE, is conducting a review with federal officials to figure out the cause.

Compounding the embarrassment is the fact that this was the second set of new blades installed on this turbine because one of the blades in the first set had been "damaged during lifting" or some such argle-bargle (hat tip Global Traveler).

"Don't worry, we'll figre it out" isn't gonna cut it.

Also interesting is what the company called the failure. You know - kind of like Secret Service terms after they botch protecting a former president: the turbine experienced "an incident."

It looked like this...

Photo of the damaged Vineyard Wind turbine shared with me by Anthony Seiger, a commerical clammer out of New Bedford, who captured it while out on a fishing trip @NewBedfordLight pic.twitter.com/Brr2PPUiTK

— Anastasia E. Lennon (@aelennon1) July 16, 2024

...and had failed two days before Vineyard Wind and GE officially notified the town that they'd experienced a catastrophic failure at the project. But, at that point, it wasn't a surprise to anyone on Nantucket because razor-sharp shards of fiberglass were already washing ashore, and larger chunks were a menacing hazard to boaters just offshore.

...The 300-foot blade remnants floated sadly atop the waves like Wilson the volleyball - posing a significant navigational hazard - before eventually slipping below the surface and coming to rest on the ocean bottom like a deformed leviathan who'd fought its last round. Yet another plan needs to be hatched to get that sucker out of there...eventually.

A massive section of a damaged 350-foot turbine blade from a wind farm off the coast of Nantucket that detached Thursday morning has sunk to the ocean floor, town officials said Friday.

The large piece of fiberglass “will be recovered in due course,” they said.

Besides the dangling fettuccine remnants of the football field-length blade, tempers were also fraying. The governor of MA, ardent wind farm fanatic Maura Healy, offered the brilliant observation to furious residents that, obviously, something was amiss with laissez-faire interest in their suffering as a result of it.

...Obviously, the astute state chief executive said, something went wrong, but no worries.

DO TELL

...Gov. Maura Healey on Thursday said state officials were on site with workers to clean up and remove debris, Axios Boston reported.

“We see the success of wind and wind turbines around the world that have been operating well and safely for decades,” Healey told Axios. “Obviously, something went wrong. There was a problem. We need to understand that, get to the bottom of it and make sure it’s addressed.”

Basically, the gov's message boiled down to wind farms are just fine, and they'll figure it out, so suck it up.

Four months later, the indefatigable beach chronicler of this disaster, Mary Chalk, notes the fiberglass and debris are still coming while GE 'investigates.'

New pollution downwind from Vineyard Wind offshore energy installation. #mapoli #nantucket #whales #seafood pic.twitter.com/p0dDVu1vYL

— Mary Chalke (@ChalkeMary40147) November 12, 2024

For starters, what GE found over the summer were more compromised blades made at that same factory, and the company cited a manufacturing defect:

...Following the blade failure in July, GE Vernova cited a manufacturing defect in its factory in Gaspé — specifically “insufficient bonding” — as the cause. The finding prompted a re-inspection of 150 blades produced at the factory, which included several that had already been delivered to New Bedford.

They decided to send the defective blades to the Vernova facility in Cherbourg, France to be repaired. However, further investigation of the Canadian facility has revealed much deeper issues than bonding on the blades - the scale of those repairs alone is becoming a breathtaking trans-Atlantic issue. 

...Since the blade break, new blades have instead been shipped to New Bedford from LM Wind’s other manufacturing plant in Cherbourg, France. The vessels have been returning to France with other blades — presumably defective blades made in Quebec.

Activity in the Port of New Bedford and vessel trackers show at least 14 blades have been loaded onto heavy-lift vessels in New Bedford and sent to France — including at least four that left the city over the weekend. 

...GE Vernova recently announced the Vineyard Wind project must remove an undisclosed number of blades that have already been installed on turbine towers south of Martha’s Vineyard while it repairs others. The repair work, it said, will occur “in the water/at the turbine, in other cases at the [marshaling] harbor [in New Bedford] and our factory in Cherbourg, France.”

The company said it would be “strengthening” the blades “as needed to support the safety and operational readiness of this project.” It is unclear what is meant by “strengthening” — whether it means applying more adhesive or fiberglass — or where in the blade the repair work will occur.

GE has also done some serious personnel housecleaning at the facility in Quebec because not only were there quality issues with finished products. 

It turns out someone was cooking the testing books.

...At least 14 turbine blades built for the Vineyard Wind project have been shipped to France from New Bedford, apparently due to a manufacturing defect that has resulted in layoffs and suspensions at the blade manufacturing plant in Gaspé, Quebec.

GE Vernova laid off nine managers and suspended 11 unionized floor workers at the LM Wind factory in Gaspé last month in response to the defective blade that broke on a turbine in July, the local union confirmed to The Light on Monday. The Gaspé plant had been manufacturing and supplying most of the blades for the Vineyard Wind project until the blade failure.

Managers at the LM Wind plant may have falsified quality testing data, according to a report from local outlet Radio Gaspésie. Citing anonymous sources, the radio station reported in late October that executives at the LM Wind plant may have asked employees to falsify quality control data, favoring production quantity over quality. 

My goodness - that engenders confidence in the system safety, doesn't it?

...LM Wind Power was acquired by GE Vernova for $1.65 billion in 2017.

"The investigation, led by GE Vernova's lawyers, reportedly revealed that employees were asked by senior company executives to falsify quality control data," according a translation Germain's story from French. "Data associated with a well-made blade was therefore associated with poorly made blades."

Just as "suddenly" the formerly pro-wind power, Green scheme-friendly denizens of the progressive New England coast are having second thoughts and withdrawing support. They are also coming to the abrupt realization that there is nothing "good" about the "Good Neighbor Agreement" they all thought was so spiffy when they signed it.

They want out.

...The blade failure at Vineyard Wind rippled across the entire offshore wind industry.  The Barr Foundation published a survey in July of 400 Rhode Island voters, which found that 70% wanted more of their electricity to come from offshore wind. This survey was done shortly before the Vineyard Wind blade failure. The Rhode Island Current reported that a September poll of 800 likely voters found that only 58% of them want more energy from offshore wind. 

While it’s not clear the blade failure had anything to do with the decline in support, a ballot question asking voters in Cape Cod to support a nonbinding endorsement of offshore wind development failed 52% to 48%. 

The Nantucket Current reported on Nov. 7 that 155 businesses on the island are urging local officials to withdraw from a “Good Neighbor Agreement.” The agreement was signed in 2020 by Nantucket, the Nantucket Preservation Trust and the Maria Mitchell Association. In exchange for supporting the Vineyard Wind project, the developer provided $16 million to mitigate historical, cultural and economic impacts. 

The Maria Mitchell Association, an educational astronomy nonprofit on Nantucket, withdrew from the agreement at the end of October. “For the past several years, as more information became available regarding additional wind turbine projects, the aggregate impact of the lighting from each turbine, and the recent blade failure, it became increasingly clear to us that the impact on our night skies and our island community was not something we could support,” the organization explained in a statement on its website.

The climate cult dreams, taxpayer-funded wind money community bribes, and "trust us" aren't enough spin for a win anymore.

And it has been a taxpayer and rate-payer-funded boondoggle here in the States. The Biden administration's handouts have become especially egregious in their last-minute hard press to avoid having a dime left for the incoming Trump administration to canx (And thanks to GlobalTrvlr for the link).

The Environmental Protection Agency has been given a checkbook for favorites with a ginormous balance to run down in a short period of time.

Although there isn’t much public information available about the Justice Climate Fund, it appears to have been an overnight success.

After gaining nonprofit status in August 2023, the organization was awarded $940 million by the Biden administration just eight months later in connection with the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to reduce carbon emissions and reduce pollution.  

...Critics note that many of the awardees are run by politically connected figures. The single biggest winner in the awards, which were announced in April, was the Climate United Fund, which is slated to receive $6.97 billion. The fund’s directors include prominent Democrats, such as Phil Angelides, a former California State Treasurer. After this article was published Climate United told RCI that Anthony Foxx, who served as Transportation Secretary in the Obama administration, was “listed as a board member for our [grant] application but did not commit to serving post award.” A press release on the group’s website names Foxx as a member of its “Inaugural Board of Directors.”

The unprecedented nature of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, is raising concerns about the Biden administration’s efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars in its final months, a gusher of taxpayer money that will flow into a poorly understood, untested, and difficult to audit format. The tremendous sums involved, the novelty of the program, and the EPA’s lack of experience in the field, as well as the unproven track record of some of the newly hatched recipients, have drawn the attention of lawmakers and others uncertain about how the taxpayers’ billions will ultimately be spent and who will keep track of it all. 

$27B - that's billion with a "B" - poof!

Into the Green ether.

What in the Sam hell is Lee Zeldin going to find when he takes over that snek pit?

Besides moths in the bank vault, I mean.

January can't come soon enough.