Offshore wind power can help state reach climate goals
In the ocean waters 20 miles off California's coast, a clean energy revolution is in the making — one that promises to bring big benefits to Golden State residents through quality job creation and investments in our port communities.
Large floating offshore wind turbines are poised to play a vital role in ensuring the state's grid reliability and energy security, as part of a diverse clean power portfolio that keeps the lights on and electric grid humming.
Last August, the California Energy Commission determined that to reach the state's 100% clean energy and climate goals, California needed to “go big” on offshore wind, adopting planning goals of up to 5 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and a nation-leading 25GW by 2045.
How much electricity is 25GW? Think 12 Diablo Canyon power plants. That's 15-20% of California's planned new cleanenergy resources, enough to power up to 25 million homes.
In December, the Biden administration held a federal auction for California offshore wind, identifying five leaseholders to deploy floating turbines at Morro Bay and Humboldt.
That's great news for labor, environmental, environmental justice and consumer advocates who supported the AB 525 law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2021. Investing in offshore wind will create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, save ratepayers billions and help residents avoid rolling blackouts California
narrowly averted last September.
While great progress has been made, essential next steps must be taken to bring California offshore wind online — including centering tribes, labor groups, and local voices in decisionmaking, transmission and port upgrades.
California needs to establish a procurement mechanism to help energy purchasers take full advantage of economies of scale that offshore wind — and other large-scale, long lead-time cleanenergy resources — employ.
Offshore wind projects are capital-intensive and require a long development runway. As the California Public Utilities Commission acknowledges, coordinating purchase of long leadtime resources may prove challenging for electricity providers.
The governor proposed establishing a procurement mechanism that lawmakers are considering to ensure diverse resources like offshore wind get built on time and at the lowest cost to ratepayers.
Assembly Bill 1373 offers a similar plan, including a critical backstop at the California Department of Water Resources for power providers who opt out of large-project procurement or come up short. Ensuring a procurement sunset date of at least 10 years builds certainty, and the bill can also channel investments into job creation and training by creating a new developer-funded workforce development fund. This combination of certainty and funding is vital to let all California energy purchasers benefit from offshore wind's economies of scale, support local communities and ensure California
rapidly builds out transmission and port infrastructure.
We have a lot of work to do, but the time for California offshore wind has clearly come. Procuring at scale is an important addition to California's energy toolbox to advance offshore wind and other promising technologies to reach our climate, clean-energy and grid-reliability goals. It will also further investments to create strong jobs and other community benefits. As Newsom underscored in his updated Clean Energy Transition Plan, these are worthy goals for California's future.