EUREKA — If the American West represents the “geography of hope,” as author Wallace Stegner wrote, then what better place than California’s far north to illustrate the eternal tension between the limitless potential of big ideas and the brutal disappointment of broken dreams?
The Golden State’s verdant North Coast, a great empire of trees and home to the Yurok, the state’s largest Native American tribe, has seen centuries of boom and bust — riches taken from above and beneath the earth. When gold miners brought their nuggets from the foothills to the coast, Eureka’s broad bay became a bustling transit hub.
After the gold was gone, it was replaced with timber, “red gold.” The region’s massive redwoods made many locals rich; when the forests were clear cut, the pulp mills came. They, too, went bust. Dams harnessed the region’s rushing rivers to produce electricity, causing the collapse of its prized salmon runs. A “green” cannabis revolution arrived, promising to bring a balm to this depressed place. But a glut of legal weed flooded the market, leaving the plants to wither along with the growers’ dreams of wealth.
Now, once again, the siren call of capturing the North Coast’s natural resources beckons dreamers and speculators, this time the treasure lies far off the rugged coast of Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Its promise: The Pacific Ocean — which feeds us, modulates our weather and delivers our goods — will provide clean, renewable energy from its powerful winds.
The tantalizing possibility of capturing wind energy from giant floating ocean platforms is considered essential to achieving California’s ambitious goal of electrifying its grid with 100% zero-carbon energy. The state’s blueprint envisions offshore wind farms producing 25 gigawatts of electricity by 2045, powering 25 million homes and providing about 13% of the power supply.
A new gold rush doesn’t begin to describe the urgency of harnessing wind off California when it comes to meeting climate goals. The first, substantial step has been taken: Last December, the federal government auctioned off 583 square miles of ocean waters off Humboldt Bay and the Central Coast’s Morro Bay to five energy companies — with more lease sales expected. The five wind farms will hold hundreds of giant turbines, each about 900 feet high, as tall as a 70-story building.
The projects will be a giant experiment: No other floating wind operations are in such deep waters. From China to Rhode Island, about 250 offshore wind farms are operating around the world, mostly in shallow waters close to shore and secured to the ocean floor. But the areas off California with the strongest winds are far from shore and too deep for traditional platforms, so developers are planning clusters of floating platforms about 20 miles off the coast, in waters more than a half-mile deep and tethered by cables.
The depth, distance from shore and new floating technology drive up the costs and complicate an already expansive process. Massive infusions of private and public money will be needed. And it likely will be a decade or longer before any major wind farms off California begin to produce power: The companies will spend up to five years preparing technical plans and analyzing environmental impacts of each project. Then federal and state review and permitting could take two or more years, and construction could last five or more years.
Each of the wind farms off Humboldt and Morro Bay will require an extensive network of offshore and onshore development, including miles of undersea transmission lines, expanded ports, new or upgraded onshore substations and electrical distribution networks. They would provide power to 1.5 million homes.
But the still-evolving technology of floating wind farms makes it challenging to analyze the viability and impacts of these projects. Experts say a lack of existing data on potential environmental effects means that much of the scientific understanding will only begin after they are operating.
“There’s no pretending this isn’t a massive enterprise that the state of California is in the process of embracing,” said Adam Stern, executive director of Offshore Wind California, an industry group.
“We cannot sugarcoat it. There are massive hurdles we need to work on. We need to wrestle these challenges to the ground and come up with work plans. That’s starting to happen. We have to help and support the leaseholders in getting their projects off the ground.”
A CalMatters analysis shows that California’s offshore wind projects carry a host of implications and uncertainties:
- Energy companies will need hundreds of millions of dollars in state subsidies or bonds to assist with the extreme costs of construction and operation. Each wind farm could cost about $5 billion to develop, construct and assemble.
- Wind farms require an unprecedented industrialization of the coast, with millions in public funds to expand and upgrade ports, harbors and support facilities.
- No one knows how wind farms will affect migrating whales and other marine mammals and seabirds. Although other offshore wind operations around the world have had minimal impact, they are not directly analogous to the Pacific Ocean or floating platforms, which have cables and lines that could entangle whales.
Commercial fishing operations are likely to face some degree of restricted access to leased waters, which include some of the state’s most productive fisheries. - Local communities will bear social costs and strains on infrastructure, such as higher housing costs and utility upgrades.
Building transmission lines and related infrastructure to distribute the new wind power carries a price tag of as much as $8 billion in California and at least $700 billion nationwide. - Private investments and public funds totaling more than $260 billion will be needed by 2045 to improve the industry’s supply chains — the parts and materials, such as rotors and turbines — to achieve the nation’s clean energy goals.
- The state government could become the largest customer for offshore wind power, since it can be locked into long-term contracts for what is likely to be expensive electricity under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
- Estimates of the cost of the power are speculative and vary widely, and the initial rates could be high — as much as $133 per megawatt hour, according to a federal analysis, compared to $34 for land-based wind.
Rather than being motivated by a can-do spirit, wind development off California is propelled by a must-do mandate. The five companies already paid the U.S. Treasury $757.1 million to lease the tracts off California.
Powering an expansive economy free of fossil fuels by 2045 means the state must triple its power generation capacity and deploy new solar and wind energy at almost five times the pace of the past decade.
“There is an undeniable urgency,” said David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission. “California has had unprecedented climate challenges. There is a fierce urgency to respond. We have to stop being academic on this. We have to build.”
It’s a leap into the unknown for officials at the California Coastal Commission, which is one of the state agencies responsible for reviewing the potential environmental impacts of these projects.
“There’s a great deal of uncertainty in all aspects of planning of offshore wind,” said Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the Coastal Commission, which has legal jurisdiction from the sea to the sand and will handle much of the analysis and permitting.
Huckelbridge, an environmental engineer, said the agency has experience understanding how large structures in the ocean affect the marine environment — think offshore oil rigs. But a wind platform — each holding a towering turbine with spinning blades as big as one-and-a half football fields — is of another magnitude.
“The scale is one of the differences that we have to get our head around,” Huckelbridge said. “All components of these turbines are on a scale we haven’t seen before anywhere in the world. Even though we know the questions to ask, the answers are not clear.”
A new state law streamlines the environmental approval process by consolidating analyses by multiple state agencies and jurisdictions. The State Lands Commission will be the lead agency for the environmental review, while the Coastal Commission is responsible for issuing a coastal development permit.
California’s offshore power generation will feed into a federal goal of 15 gigawatts by 2035. The Biden administration calls the rush to claim this new energy frontier the “Floating Offshore Wind Shot,” invoking the memory of the Moon Shot and the enormous collective effort to put an American on the moon.
Welcoming with open arms — but fingers crossed
Scott Adair strode brightly into a conference room on a cold and misty summer morning. Thoughtful and earnest, Adair had been musing about his county’s Next Big Thing.
Two areas off Humboldt already have been leased for wind farms that will hold perhaps 50 or more turbines each, and the region is expected to host most of California’s future projects. Wind there is strong and reliable, and, while the region badly needs a transmission upgrade, it also has room to accommodate new infrastructure.
