Oil giant Shell walks away from major New Jersey offshore wind farm | Hacker News Reader

Oil giant Shell walks away from major New Jersey offshore wind farm

apnews.com

49 pointsgeox10 comments

It's not really a surprise and not much of a headline. It was a bigger deal when Orsted pulled out a couple years ago.

In Shell's case this just sounds like tax fraud at work. What's there to right off? They didn't build shit yet and this isn't their industry.

Wikipedia: "Atlantic Shores is a proposal by EDF Renewables/Shellm which acquired rights for BOEM OCS-A 0499 (NJWEA North), an 183,353 acres (74,200 ha) area".

An acquisition, in other words. The $1b is "mainly relating to renewable generation assets in North America", including that acquisition.

For reference, the lease for BOEM OCS-A 0499 lease cost around a million dollars for the winning bid a few years earlier[1]. We're way off on their claim. Even if they had 20x these leases to write down it's still a small percent of the claimed loss.

[1] https://www.boem.gov/sites/default/files/documents/oil-gas-e...

In order to 'write off' something, you have to take a financial loss; where's the tax fraud?

Is it weird that the executive order [0] mentioned in the article specifically names a wind project (Lava Ridge [1]) that is nowhere near the outer continental shelf?

0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/temp...

1. https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2013782/510

It's a technical term:

> The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA or Act) (43 U.S.C. §§ 1331 et seq.) defines the United States outer continental shelf (OCS) as all submerged lands lying seaward of state submerged lands and waters (as defined in the Submerged Lands Act, e.g., 3 nautical miles offshore) which are under U.S. jurisdiction and control.

https://coast.noaa.gov/data/Documents/OceanLawSearch/Summary...

The show Landman makes good reasoning about green energy being a good investment by energy companies. If green energy made them money they’d get in on it tomorrow.

I'd hardly use Landman as a benchmark for well researched and unbiased reasoning. The rant about wind turbines was so out of touch with good faith that I actually had to go back and check if I'd heard it correctly.

In Australia's energy market, power generators participate in a bidding system managed by the market operator. Generators submit bids specifying how much electricity they can provide (in megawatts), at what price, for specific time periods.

The market operator (AEMO) then selects the lowest bids to meet current electricity demand.

Fossil fuel generators in the past have artificially limited their available capacity and also submitted intentionally higher priced bids. This maintained higher electricity prices and increased their profits.

When grid scale batteries started entering the market, they were able to provide electricity at lower cost, submitting price competitive bids. This forced fossil fuel generators to either lower their prices or risk losing market share.

Over the last year or so, fossil fuel companies began investing in their own battery storage systems. But instead of bidding competitively with their batteries, these companies submit higher bids than independent battery operators. This is an attempt to help them maintain artificially elevated market prices and protects their traditional fossil fuel business model.

He acts well and reasons about incorrectly, as you’d expect from someone who knows nothing about it. Wind turbines are carbon ahead in 7mo on average, including transpiration for all materials, concrete, etc. And they can make a lot of money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com