Offshore Wind: California Winning the Race

California has established an ambitious target to develop its offshore wind industry. The Golden State aims to achieve 25,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2045, around as much as entire Europe has today.

The target established by the California Energy Commission on Wednesday is the most significant commitment any state has made until now to develop wind farms off of their coastlines. The objective is more significant considering that the United States’s recently established offshore wind sector has acquired a foothold on the East Coast.

Thus far, there are two minor projects off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia with the ability to produce merely 42 megawatts of electrical power. The first commercial-scale wind farm, built off the coastline of Massachusetts, just obtained federal approval from the Interior Department in 2021. The pipeline of new projects remains to expand primarily on the East Coast; Virginia regulators authorized plans to develop the United States’s largest wind farm to date in the first week of August.

A commitment to clean energy

The reason the East Coast has such a head start boils down to its location. On the West Coast, ocean depths drop fairly near to the coast compared to the East Coast. Making it difficult to attach wind turbines to the seafloor. In the past, turbines could not be set up in waters deeper than 60 meters. To fix this problem, California is considering new floating wind turbines; however, they are still in development. Such systems can unlock 60% of the country’s offshore wind resources that otherwise could have been out of reach.

The turbines could assist California in overcoming one of the biggest obstacles in its attempts to shift to 100% clean power by 2045. The state currently produces more solar power than any other. Still, it requires an additional source of power to take over after the sun sets. The California Energy Commission hopes offshore wind can offer sufficient renewable energy through the evening.

The California Energy Commission stated that achieving 25,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2045 may power 25 million residences. It additionally established a shorter-term objective of establishing approximately 5,000 megawatts of capacity by 2030.

The Biden administration is establishing offshore wind to expand throughout almost every coastline along the continental United States– from the Pacific Northwest and California to the Gulf of Mexico and the length of the East Coast. The objective is for wind turbines to produce 30,000 megawatts of clean power for the United States in ten years.

Originally published by: The Verge