California’s offshore wind plans are terminally ill

September 1, 2025

OPINION by MANDY DAVIS

The Department of Transportation’s Aug. 29 crucial decision and action will have more than significant impacts on the future of offshore wind in California. You could say that the minimally heralded action not only threw a huge monkey wrench into our governor’s favorite pie-in-the-sky project, but literally dealt a death blow to the industry itself in our state.

Floating offshore wind is officially in hospice, terminally ill with no possibility of recovery. What was that action and how did it come about?

First, let’s talk about what is necessary for the behemoth and outrageously expensive industry of floating offshore wind to exist in the first place. Most of us are now familiar with the wind “farms” themselves – huge wind turbines floating out in 4,000 foot deep outer continental waters that are proposed to be built with their requisite floating substations and thousands of miles of buried sub sea high voltage cable coming into shore.

These “farms” are the source of output, but what is just as crucial to the industry are the industrial ports to build, stage and service the installations. If these ports do not exist, the industry is doomed.

To date, there are three sites being seriously considered for offshore wind industrial port buildout: Long Beach for building and manufacturing, Port San Luis for operations and maintenance and Humboldt for staging and integration. All three of these types of facilities are needed for a functioning floating offshore wind industry.

It is with this knowledge and understanding that REACT Alliance has taken their cue and has been working behind the scenes to communicate with the federal agencies (Department of Transportation, Department of Interior, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency ) involved with the proliferation of offshore wind to end federal monies slated to bolster port infrastructure buildout and to effectively end floating offshore wind in our state.

On June 4, REACT Alliance drafted a letter to the Department of Transportation in reference to their allocation of close to a half billion dollars of Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight & Highway Projects (INFRA) grant money for a heavy lift terminal in Humboldt county crucial to the operation of the offshore wind area leases and buildout.

After careful analysis, we determined the INFRA grant to be outside Department of Transportation sited grant parameters and a blatant misappropriation of federal funds encouraged by California politicians and pushed by a complicit Biden administration. In other words, the grant never should have been issued and all monies should be returned to the Department of Transportation.

On Aug. 15, we followed up with a demand for an immediate end to the grant and a complete rescission of funds.

On Aug. 29, the response we were waiting for became a reality, the INFRA grant was rescinded leaving the Humboldt heavy lift terminal high and dry and without the funding necessary to build the slated project that was absolutely crucial to offshore wind operations.

This is a blow to a failing industry that never should have been considered to begin with: an inefficient, expensive and environmentally destructive technology whose insufficiencies are now being realized all over the world.

REACT Alliance will continue to fight the proposed industrial port projects in both Port San Luis and Long Beach to ensure the absolute failure of the industry,but make no mistake, California cannot afford to fund the multibillion dollar boondoggle on its own, and the Humboldt project failure just put floating offshore wind in Hospice; struggling to catch its breath. on insufficient life support and lacking the lifeblood to survive.

If Gov. Gavin Newsom were wise and compassionate he would just pull the plug, put an end to watching the death throes and lay offshore wind in its waiting grave.

Mandy Davis is the president of REACT Alliance and a Morro Bay resident. REACT Alliance is a local organization established to educate and inform the public about the issues involved with offshore wind.