The Green Grift of Offshore Wind Subsidies

Taxpayers and electric ratepayers will be the ones hit hardest

Letter to The WSJ. 

"The offshore wind subsidies described in your recent editorial, “Gone With the New York Wind,” (April 23) are even larger. Thanks to a March reinterpretation of the Inflation Reduction Act, offshore wind developers can claim an additional 10% investment tax credit if their on-land control systems are located in an eligible “energy community,” which include areas where coal plants have been shuttered, such as southwest Connecticut.

Then there is the rewritten Section 48 tax credit, which provides another 6% benefit for projects that provide apprenticeship programs and pay “prevailing” wages. Hence, U.S. taxpayers will be forced to pay almost half of the construction costs of offshore wind. The government also intends to socialize the costs of connecting these projects to the existing power grid, unlike, say, new natural-gas generation. Because offshore wind is inherently intermittent, they require back-up generation and battery storage that is also subsidized under the IRA. Yet offshore wind remains uneconomic without long-term contract prices higher than wholesale market prices. As European countries have shown, taxpayers and electric ratepayers are the losers in this ongoing green grift.

Jonathan Lesser

Senior fellow, National Center for Energy Analytics

Edgewood, N.M."