The Biden administration is advancing the first areas off of the California coast for offshore wind development in a move that could ultimately help both the White House and the state government meet aggressive targets for carbon-free power.
The Interior Department, along with the Defense Department and the California government, announced Tuesday it has identified a nearly 400 square mile area off of the state’s central coast, near Morro Bay, that could support 3 gigawatts of offshore wind power.
THE VINEYARD WIND APPROVAL COULD USHER IN THE FIRST WAVE OF OFFSHORE PROJECTS
In addition, the Interior Department is exploring a region off the coast of Northern California, known as the Humboldt Call Area, for a potential offshore wind project that could support up to another 1.6 gigawatts of power.
In total, developing offshore wind in those two regions could provide enough electricity to power 1.6 million homes, the agencies said in a news release.
The announcement is the first move by the federal government and California to advance offshore wind in the Pacific, a notoriously more difficult feat than building wind turbines along the East Coast. Earlier this month, the Biden administration gave the green light for the first large-scale offshore wind project, up to 84 turbines off the coast of Massachusetts, providing 800 megawatts of power.
Clean energy advocates said the approval will unleash a wave of new projects along the East Coast. President Joe Biden has set big offshore wind ambitions, too, to deploy 30 gigawatts by 2030.
Currently, the United States only has two small-scale pilot offshore wind projects in operation, one off the coast of Rhode Island and the other off the coast of Virginia, totaling about 42 megawatts of power.
While there are several significant offshore wind projects along the East Coast waiting for federal approval, offshore wind activity has been much slower in California because projects face higher hurdles. For example, the Pacific waters become much deeper, much closer to the shoreline than the Atlantic waters, meaning any turbines off the coast of California are likely to employ floating technology, a more nascent form of offshore wind.
Also on Tuesday, the Energy Department said it has been investing over the past few years more than $100 million in research, development, and deployment of floating offshore wind technology.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, boasted of the size of the projects envisioned off of the state’s coast, which he said are orders of magnitude bigger than the recently approved Vineyard Wind project.
He said with today’s floating wind turbine technology, which produces roughly 12 megawatts per turbine, the project near Morro Bay could support 380 new wind turbines, compared to Vineyard Wind’s 84 turbines.
The magnitude of the investment and job creation “is quite significant, and I imagine will generate enormous amount of international, not just domestic, interest,” Newsom said.
Any projects along the California coastline also must be cognizant not to impede on critical research and testing the Defense Department conducts off the state’s shores.
Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said the Defense Department underwent a lengthy review to identify potential effects offshore wind development in these two regions could have on its training and readiness exercises.
“I think we got to a place where we think that any negative effects were mitigated and certainly balanced against the imperative of moving in a clean energy direction,” Kahl said.
Next month, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, part of the Interior Department, will hold a task force meeting with California to discuss the two potential areas for offshore wind development. The agency will then conduct an environmental analysis of the potential projects, with the goal to hold a combined lease sale in mid-2022.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the agency won’t “prejudge” the review process but stressed that developing offshore wind is a priority for the Biden administration. The proposed development off California’s shores hasn’t garnered much public opposition so far, though wind projects off the East Coast have previously grappled with complaints from the commercial fishing industry that slowed down the review process, as well as some local critics.
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For California’s part, Newsom said the state has already included tens of millions in its budget to “accelerate” the state’s environmental review of offshore wind projects and to support designing, building, and engineering efforts. That funding also includes upgrades to ports and the build-out of electric transmission.
Newsom also suggested the major potential offshore wind projects would offer a “visionary opportunity” transition for California off of nuclear power to renewable energy. California is shutting down its last nuclear power plant, the more than 2 gigawatt Diablo Canyon facility, by 2025.
