California aims to score big in the race for offshore wind - The Verge
California’s new goal for offshore wind is massive. There’s a lot of potential to generate clean energy off the state’s shores, and California is eyeing futuristic new turbines to hit its target.
California has set a hella ambitious goal to build up its offshore wind industry. The Golden State is aiming to reach 25,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2045, about as much as all of Europe has today.
The target set by the California Energy Commission on Wednesday is the biggest commitment any state has made yet to develop wind farms off of their coasts. The goal is even more monumental considering the US’s fledgling offshore wind industry has really only gained a foothold on the East Coast.
So far, there are two small projects off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia capable of generating just 42 megawatts of electricity. The first commercial-scale wind farm, to be built off the coast of Massachusetts, just received federal approval from the Interior Department last year. The pipeline of new projects continues to grow mostly on the East Coast; Virginia regulators approved plans to build the US’s biggest wind farm yet last week.
The reason that the East Coast has so much of a head start comes down to geography. On the West Coast, ocean depths drop steeply relatively close to the shore compared to the East Coast. That makes it hard to affix turbines to the seafloor. Historically, turbines couldn’t really be installed in waters greater than 60 meters deep. To solve that problem, California is looking to new floating turbines that are still in development. Such technologies could unlock some 60 percent of the nation’s offshore wind resources that otherwise might have been out of reach.
Those turbines could help California overcome one of the stumbling blocks in its efforts to transition to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045. The state already generates more solar energy than any other. But it needs another power source to fill in after the sun sets. The California Energy Commission hopes offshore wind can step in to provide enough renewable energy through the evening.
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