The Mad King’s fever dream of energy dominance is designed to reward the fossil fuel industry and punish renewable energy. It will prove costly to both ratepayers and public health.

It’s also doomed to fail, according to energy economics experts.

Jamie Dickerson, senior director of climate and clean energy programs at the Acadia Center, said the actions taken by the regime to halt offshore wind projects and port infrastructure along the East Coast will “increase utility bills for families and businesses by hundreds of millions of dollars annually, jeopardize reliable power, and kill thousands of good-paying, union jobs.”

A recent study conducted by Daymark Energy Advisors on behalf of RENEW Northeast found that offshore wind would have saved New England ratepayers $400 million in utility bill costs last year and lowered energy market prices by 11%.

Even under the most conservative assumptions, the study found additional capacity from offshore wind would have reduced regional capacity market costs by at least $128 million in 2024. It also noted that under the most expensive power-purchase agreement the average residential customer would still see a $1.32 to $2.68 per month in savings.

The Northeast power grid is overreliant on methane, which provides about 50% of electricity generation in New England, including 87% in Rhode Island. The region spends some $3 billion annually on pipelined-in methane for power generation.

New England saw a 67% price increase between 2024 and 2025 due to a 112% jump in the price of methane, according to the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis. The IEEFA noted the regime’s energy policy will collapse investor confidence, unless the White House stops issuing stop-work orders for offshore wind.

ISO New England, the grid operator for the six-state region, agrees. Late last month it released a statement that ended with this: “Unpredictable risks and threats to resources — regardless of technology — that have made significant capital investments, secured necessary permits, and are close to completion will stifle future investments, increase costs to consumers, and undermine the power grid’s reliability and the region’s economy now and in the future.”

MAGAs undermine all they can, from public health to humanity’s future. The regime’s efforts to keep aging, polluting, and unreliable coal plants operational is but one example.

An Aug. 29 announcement by the regime withdrawing and canceling significant offshore wind port infrastructure funding — $679 million in federal funds for 12 offshore wind projects — came a week after a stop-work order halted progress on the 80% complete Revolution Wind project, which was slated to begin delivering 700 megawatts of power to Rhode Island and Connecticut next year.

Other impacted offshore wind port projects and canceled federal funding in the Northeast include: Quonset, R.I., $11.2 million; Bridgeport, Conn., $10.5 million; Salem, Mass., $33.8 million; Staten Island, N.Y., $48 million; and Paulsboro, N.J., $20.5 million.

The regime also has moved to revoke the permits for New England Wind. The Mad King is also reconsidering previously approved permits for the SouthCoast Wind project off the Massachusetts coast.

Without this promised and planned for investment in these port facilities and their associated energy projects and the expected power generation from offshore wind, the region’s economy and infrastructure is likely to be negatively impacted.

“The grid manager, ISO New England, they’re counting on a certain amount of that capacity generation to be online starting next year. They’re counting on that because the developer bid into the market and said, ‘We will be done. We will be sending you electricity in 2026,'” said Dennis Wamsted, energy analyst for the IEEFA. “That chunk of change, that 700 megawatts [Revolution Wind] or what they bid into the market, they’re supposed to be sending those megawatts into the New England grid starting, say, March 1 of 2026. If this stop-work order were to continue and it wasn’t available, the grid manager would have to go find a replacement for that 700 megawatts. … They would have to go find that power someplace, and it would probably be more expensive because it would be a short term. You wouldn’t have planned for it.”

Dickerson noted these stoppages and withdrawn funding will make energy systems more vulnerable to extreme weather, weaken federal-state energy system planning and collaboration, and erode investor confidence and market stability that will, like the IEEFA said, undermine future investment in needed grid infrastructure.

“From any point of view, halting work on established wind projects that states energy officials are relying on to meet power needs, clean the air, and reduce system costs defies the facts and simply makes no sense,” Dickerson said.

Undercutting these projects, which have billions of private investment dollars committed, is sending shock waves through all energy project financing, according to the IEEFA.

Wamsted noted the cost of this political uncertainty will raise the risks and, therefore, the costs of developing other new energy sources, including nuclear, both small modular and conventional reactors, battery storage, and solar.

“You would be hard-pressed to ever come up with support for canceling a project that was 80 percent done,” he recently told me. “You know, that’s $5 billion worth of investment effectively now out the door. I expect they will reach some sort of agreement to finish, but when and how that takes place, I don’t know. And those costs, you know, those costs accumulate every day, so they will be passed on to either investors of the developer or in some way, shape or fashion to ratepayers.”

Wamsted said renewable energy and battery storage are the best options for adding significant amounts of new generation capacity to U.S. power grids. He noted renewable energy, including offshore wind, are effective hedges against the volatility of methane supply and cost.

The Boston resident and lifelong East Coast inhabitant has been studying offshore wind since 2019. He supports the technology — not for political reasons or because he thinks turbines look cool — but because the data back their use.

“The analytical work we’ve done at IEEFA shows that offshore wind works well, and would work particularly well in the winter when New England needs it the most,” Wamsted said. “It would help curtail a great deal of demand for gas-fired generation, which would lower costs for everybody across the board.”

He noted building offshore wind off the Northeast coast makes sense for several reasons, beyond the need to mitigate the climate crisis.

“You can’t build big things on land in New England because there isn’t room, because there are so many people, and there’s a lot of concern about in my backyard,” Wamsted said. “Offshore gets rid of a lot of those issues, and yet still provides you with generation close to where the demand source is — Boston, Providence, New Haven.”

He also said offshore wind would make the New England power grid more resilient and reliable. He noted any new conventional nuclear reactor could take as long as two decades to plan, permit, and build. Small modular reactors are years away from coming online, as their technology and cost-effectiveness remain unproven.

Despite the uncertainty, cost, and time associated with nuclear power and the increasing amount of damage being caused by the burning of fossil fuels, the Mad King is sabotaging renewable energy development because he enjoys being the center of attention, even if it means starring in a Shit Show. Plus, he needs to pay back the fossil fuel industry for helping to fund his reelection.

The regime injects political and financial uncertainty into everything it does, because it doesn’t know how to govern, has no sympathy or compassion, and is easily bought, bribed, and blackmailed. The country is being held hostage by horrible people — people you wouldn’t hire to babysit, walk your dog, or wash your car.

Data show, however, that offshore wind is a reliable resource off the East Coast, according to Wamsted. He noted the largest completed offshore wind project, Ørsted’s 132-megawatt South Fork Wind facility off Long Island, N.Y., posted a 46.3% capacity factor in its first 11 months of operation.

More importantly, he said, during the winter, when methane prices in both New York and New England are typically highest because of competing demands for power generation and home heating, the South Fork Wind facility posted a capacity factor of 53.7%. For comparison, the annual capacity factor of U.S. coal-fired generation in 2024 was 42.6%, while methane-fired combined cycle units recorded a systemwide capacity factor of 59.7%.

“We can argue about the price, but the price is set for the next 25 years, 30 years. Gas prices are never set. In a cold winter, gas prices spike in New England and drive up electricity prices, sometimes exorbitantly,” Wamsted said. “That won’t happen with offshore wind because the price is whatever it is. It’s going to be 15 cents a kilowatt-hour or 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, whatever that particular contract was, but it’s a flat fee and that gives people a lot of planning ability.”

An IEEFA analysis completed last year showed that four projects then under construction or in advanced development — Revolution Wind, Vineyard Wind, and New England Wind 1 and 2 — and scheduled for commercial operation by 2029 could have generated more than 15% of New England’s average daily power demand during the winter when methane supplies are often tight and prices high.

“The current administration is clearly pushing an agenda favoring fossil fuels and nuclear power. But a banker being asked to loan money for such a project — whether a multibillion-dollar interstate gas pipeline or a new nuclear facility — likely will think hard before lending money to a project that could be stopped at the 11th hour by a future administration,” Wamsted said. “At a minimum, the current administration’s actions are likely to raise the financing costs for some projects. Some could be unfinanceable, such as nuclear projects that require long lead times and have extremely high capital costs. If an investor-owned utility is relying on federal government financial support for a nuclear project, state regulators are likely to have second and even third thoughts before approving such a deal, given the massive economic risks it would place on the utility’s ratepayers.”

MAGAs simply believe the federal government should make life harder and worse for anyone not mega wealthy.

Note: Aurora Energy Research published in May that offshore wind would have saved New York $77 million in electricity costs in a single cold/high-cost winter month in 2022 or 2025. Synapse Energy Economics published in June 2024 that 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 would reduce New England electricity bills by $630 million to $1.7 billion annually under mid- and high methane price scenarios, reducing customer bills by $2.79 to $4.61 a month.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.