Rights of Navigation – Gone with the Wind?
By Jacqueline M. Moore, Vice President, Pacific Merchant Shipping Association
It is no secret that California is in desperate need of reliable, safe, affordable, and resilient energy. With a 1,700-megawatt power shortfall forecast for this summer, it will be a hot and difficult summer. Renewable offshore wind energy could certainly enhance the portfolio. In March of 2021, the Biden Administration declared a national goal to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by 2030, and to ultimately create a pathway to 110 GW by 2050. Never one to be outdone, nor choose the same timelines as everybody else, California has just released draft goals of 3 GW by 2030, 15 GW by 2045, and up to 20 GW by 2050. The entire country has a capacity of less than 50 megawatts today. Alas, the country is behind many others; Scotland has 1 GW today and a further 25 GW already in the works.
In the last decade, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which no one had ever heard of before, leased nine offshore sites in federal waters on the East Coast. They have now turned their sights on the West Coast: two locations off the coast of Northern California (Humboldt and Morro Bay) and an additional two offshore the southern coast of Oregon (Coos Bay and Brookings) have been identified as optimal for deploying offshore floating wind farms. Optimal for all except the maritime community and vessels (including navigational radar interference) that transit along the coast in federal waters.
What is perplexing about this whole effort is the lack of engagement on the part of federal agencies with the maritime industry. While offshore wind energy may be, in general, good in practice, it is also an obvious hazard to navigation. Yet, the many state and federal agencies involved in deploying offshore wind projects have practically made it a mission to snub the maritime community. Three years of supposed public outreach that has included no outreach to the industry and a cold shoulder to repeated requests to meet. One could be forgiven for believing that, despite the long-term and historic presence of vessels serving the West Coast and the U.S. and their critical nature to our economy, BOEM views them as simply inconvenient to the energy pursuit. The maritime industry, of course, isn’t the only major stakeholder in these offshore wind farms, as environmental groups, tribal organizations, national defense, and the fishing community have their own considerations; the difference being that these stakeholders have all been engaged by BOEM, the latter even part of a state-prescribed working group.
When it comes to wind farms in the U.S., the public process has become nothing more than hot air with a strong sense of predetermination. Recently, the California Coastal Commission, which is tasked with Federal Consistency Determinations, offered many accolades for staff as they had completed the process in an unheard-of speedy three months. Given how the wheels of bureaucracy turn in California, it is hard to imagine that any sort of deliberative process occurred. Clearly, there was pressure from both the state and federal administrations to push the Humboldt offshore wind project through, regardless of deficient analysis and coordination.
Take the latest Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Morro Bay project, for example. The intent of the EA is to consider potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts. With just a handful of sentences dedicated to our industry, which were completely inaccurate and claimed no impact, BOEM has quite simply failed. The agency even went so far as to falsely claim particular vessel types don’t transit the area, which is completely fabricated, even with their masking of data. (To be clear; every wind farm that has been proposed in the Pacific Ocean is placed in the main thoroughfares of vessel traffic – almost as if done premeditatively – see figure on page 12.) Upon further inspection, this author discovered that BOEM has simply copied and pasted ‘vessel analyses’ from previous documents for other proposed projects; what was before, at best, ambiguous, has become fraudulent.
AB 525 (Chiu, 2021) requires the California Energy Commission (CEC) to develop a strategic plan for offshore wind energy developments in the state but that bill also failed to include the maritime industry as a stakeholder. This sets a dangerous precedent. The bill identified the need to “initiate long-term [wind energy] transmission and infrastructure planning.” Great! However, isn’t this just another example of putting the cart before the horse – er, substation before the turbine – publishing a strategic plan years after federal and state efforts have already been initiated?
It is high time that both state and federal agencies treat the maritime industry as an important stakeholder in developing shared marine uses. Forty years ago, PMSA opposed the development of placing pipelines in navigation areas off the coast of Huntington Beach, raising concerns about oil pipelines and ships operating in the same area. Those concerns were ignored. Hopefully, agencies will be more mindful of maritime stakeholders this time around.