For all the fretting, teeth gnashing, and howling at the moon here over the disruption in the Green Grift that is the wind industry and offshore wind particularly, nothing is quite as satisfying as watching the original practitioners of the fraud - the Europeans, fall on their dull, unrecyclable turbine blades.

A couple of things have happened recently that signal tough times are ahead - a dunkelflaute or 'dark doldrums' - for the European wind industry and those governments that have gulped the green Kool-Ade to the very last drop in the pitcher, foisting the unreliable on their citizens even as they cast aside all their trusty old sources of power generation.

One of my favorite industry villains - Ørsted, the Danish renewable behemoth and star of so many of my offshore wind pieces set here and abroad - has had such a rough go of it over the past year and a half that they're shaking up the occupants in the executive office suites.

 Orsted (ORSTED.CO), opens new tab Chief Executive Mads Nipper will step down to be replaced by company insider Rasmus Errboe, the world's biggest offshore wind developer said on Friday, as it seeks to arrest an 83% slump in its share price since its 2021 peak.

The Danish renewables firm has been crucial to establishing a European industry for wind at sea, but the industry has struggled in recent years with rising costs, supply chain bottlenecks, higher interest rates, and regulatory changes.

Its push into the nascent U.S. market has also proved challenging, resulting in delays and impairment charges, and has been complicated by U.S. President Donald Trump's outspoken opposition to wind power. Trump has suspended federal offshore wind leasing pending an environmental and economic review.

...The former oil and gas company's woes reflect the changing fortunes of wind power globally as soaring costs, delays and limited supply chain investment prompt investors to reassess the speed of the energy transition.

Trump hasn't had time to do much other than gum up already gummed-up works.

These guys were in trouble long before he got reelected.

...Once a green investor favourite, Orsted's market value stood at $15.1 billion at Thursday's close, a far cry from its peak of $93.9 billion in January 2021, LSEG data shows.

"The simplest way for investors to regain trust is to change the CEO," Sydbank analyst Jacob Pedersen said, while adding that Errboe was the right person for the job.

I don't know that a change in the face of the guy in the picture is really going to do all that much good at this stage. The problems with renewables go much deeper than they did back in the glory days of five years ago when big fat checks were being written with abandon, Greta Thunberg wasn't yet a Hamas dupe (merely an annoying autistic child being manipulated by her parents), and unicorn farts were still 'real' to a large portion of a gullible world.

It's as if it were such a lifetime ago. 

But it only took four years for xPOTATUS to enable foaming-at-the-mouth, authoritarian progressive cult members here, and a Russian invasion, a pipeline explosion, and the escape of uncensored information and data to expose the unsustainable madness of the renewable transition in Europe to prove what a fraud it all was and turn the majority of rational citizens virulently against the forced 'energy transition/Green New Deal' plans. 

In the US, we could vote the bums out and were lucky enough to vote in a guy willing to immediately keep his promises to squash the madness. In Europe, the populist movement is making the Brussels brahmins exceedingly uncomfortable, and their squirming efforts to rephrase or reframe while maintaining extreme climate cult goals are being outright rejected by both citizens and individual governments.

In Denmark, ground zero for the wind movement, hard times have hit the offshore waters.

Denmark will halt all ongoing offshore wind tenders as the existing framework where no subsidies are offered does not work under current market conditions, its energy minister said on Friday.

The global offshore wind industry has been hit by surging costs, rising interest rates and supply chain bottlenecks. Denmark said in December that its latest tender for wind at sea had failed to attract any bids.

The government will now start preparations to launch a new offshore wind tender this year with a capacity of two to three gigawatts (GW), where state subsidies might be offered, energy minister Lars Aagaard told a press conference.

Lemme repeat that - OFFSHORE WIND CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT SUBSIDIES in the home of offshore wind.

Well...huh.

Maybe they need to rethink that, then?

...“The Danish offshore wind flop should be a surprise to no one,” Esben Hegnsholt, managing director at Boston Consulting Group in Copenhagen, wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Like the naked Emperor, the only ones that seem surprised are the protagonists themselves — politicians and opinion makers visibly far from reality of the industry.”

Reality! What a concept!

Speaking of which, take the Brits...PLEASE!

I KID, I KID (I think)

I've done story after gobsmacking story on the state of the British electrical grid, thanks to both the Tories buying into the unicorn fart version of energy suicide right before they panicked, started to wake up, and got booted from office. The vanquished conservatives handed the country over to Labour, who had the Green katana already sharpened and ready for the ritual energy seppuku they'd only fever dreamed of.

They wasted no time slicing through the country's fossil fuel abdominal wall in a gleeful evisceration, banning British North Sea oil and gas exploration.

NET ZERO - The end days.

Ed Miliband issues an immediate ban on North-sea oil.

I’d say can the last person leaving turn the lights out … but they’ll already be out 🤣🤡 pic.twitter.com/97gosJ4xvO

— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) July 11, 2024

Because, with wind and all those cool renewables, it's all moonlight and roses, chirpy and cheerfully GREEN.

Only a Labour Government can deliver ambitious climate policies

🛢️ Ban new North Sea oil & gas drilling
🌹 Publicly owned GB Energy
⚡️ 100% clean power by 2030
💨 Quadruple offshore wind
🏡 Warm Homes Plan on retrofit
👷‍♀️ National Wealth Fund for green jobs

All in the manifesto pic.twitter.com/Js4JZluOQI

— Tom Briars-Delve (@briarsdelve) June 13, 2024

Besides, no one minds paying out the asterisk to fire up the few remaining power plants to cover a shortage when the electrical grid gets dicey, right? And if those generators aren't enough, we can always filch some juice from the continent while still pretending how 'carbon-free' it all is - they've got lots to spare.

Don't they?

...When you've bet your country's entire energy profile on such flimsy, unreliable things, a rational person might think there could possibly be a problem in such circumstances. 

Lo and behold, there was a few days later when the trunk lines from Europe that deliver their excess generated power as backup electricity to keep the fraudulent British Green scheme of renewables running were 'unavailable' because it was cold on the continent, too.

...The UK now depends on additional power generation being available from the continent via trunk lines instead of maintaining its homegrown energy security. The government, both the former Tory and now Labour, act as if the British are not an island and nothing can happen to interrupt the flow of that power when the UK needs it.

But, oh, my gosh - look what happened just a week ago. There was a low power warning, why?

Because there was no power available from the continent for what England was going to need at their usage rate.

OOPSIES

SCHAMYBE, SCHMAYBE NOT

See, some of the providers who send the go-juice in times of need through those trunk lines to England are getting kind of pissy about what it costs them to do it in the modern European Union socialist setup.

See, 'Green' means everyone is poorer for it, not just the guys who are short of energy. The producers are also taking it in the shorts.

The Norwegians were already tired of sending their electricity to the UK and getting the bill for it. They threatened a couple of years ago to 'ration' electrical deliveries.

And, again, the UK is only 'more dependent than ever' on the Continent for power because they CHOOSE to live that way/do this to themselves.

Norway has drawn up plans to ration electricity exports in a move that has heightened fears of energy shortages in the UK and Europe this winter.

The government in Oslo on Monday announced new rules limiting the sale of power to foreign countries as heatwaves threaten Norway’s hydroelectric power generation.

Experts said the restrictions threatened the UK’s plan to draw power from Norway this winter via the North Sea Link - leaving electricity supplies more stretched and risking even higher bills for consumers.

The National Grid has already revealed that the UK is set to be more dependent than ever on the Continent for power, with interconnectors expected to provide up to 5.7 gigawatts of electricity at peak times. About one quarter of that total – or 1.4 gigawatts – is set to come from Norway.

Three years on, the policy controversy is so deep, and EU demands are becoming so unreasonable that the Norwegian government just collapsed because of it. 

Norway’s government collapsed on Thursday after the eurosceptic Centre party left the ruling two-party coalition in a row over adopting EU green energy laws.

Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, the finance minister and Centre party leader, said he could not accept three EU directives on increasing renewable energy sources and efficiency.

“We say that enough is enough, this is the limit. We are doing it to change Norwegian electricity policy and create a dynamic where we can take measures that can give us lower and stable electricity prices in Norway, and that we should not cede more power to the EU,” Mr Vedum announced, according to Norwegian broadcaster DN.

Norway is not a member of the European Union but is part of the European Economic Area [EEA], which grants access to the EU’s single market but requires the country to follow most EU directives.

Norway is signaling 'blow it out yer turbine' to Brussels, who is now very unhappy at being foiled.

If you want to understand the entire problem with the climate cult mentality exacerbated by authoritarian EU brahmins as a whole, you need only read this quote:

...One EU ambassador in Oslo recently told the Financial Times: “We are not happy with Norway. The sentiment is as bad as I have known it.

“Norway looks selfish, trying to keep this electricity for itself even as it makes so much money from selling gas to us.”

Is that not every Leftist/cultist/progressive/professional victimhood/Gollum you have ever heard in your life, right there?

...Norway is a key source of electricity for Britain when the nation’s own power supplies dip. Norway generates energy from its hydroelectric power facilities, which offer a stable source of electricity in contrast to intermittent solar and wind.

Britain is expected to become increasingly reliant on electricity imports under Ed Miliband’s net zero push as Labour seeks to decarbonise the grid by switching to intermittent renewables, with wind power forming a crucial pillar of its plans.

WHY IS NORWAY DOING THIS TO US?

Go ahead, England - shove your stick in the front wheel spokes of the bike and hold your knee, moaning about the greedy Norwegians.

Whining for the fjords will get them nowhere nowadays.

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