The Trump Administration is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to encourage companies to abandon some offshore wind power projects and refocus their efforts on fossil fuels. One of them is off the Central Coast.
The move has led to outrage from green energy advocates in California.
"The biggest surprise is the administration is using taxpayer funds that they really aren't authorized to use to achieve a result that doesn't make a whole lot of sense," said Michael Colvin, Director of the California Energy Program with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.
In 2022, three companies purchased offshore federal leases to develop offshore wind projects off Morro Bay.
This week, the federal government announced it had reached a $120 million deal with one of the companies, Golden State Wind, to abandon its lease in favor of fossil fuel projects. The company will get the money if it invests $120 million in oil, gas, or liquefied natural gas projects on the Gulf Coast.
The move is seen by some members of Congress and the environmental community as an effort to push the Trump Administration’s preference for fossil fuels.
"I think that's part of the problem. They haven't justified their action," said Colvin. "They're taking a personal preference and making it policy."
Colvin added that the action undermines years of research and planning that have gone into the Morro Bay projects.
"Let's start with the fundamentals here. Offshore wind, and these lease sites have gone through an entire process to identify the lease sites, to put the leases up for auction, and then to help develop those lease sites. All of that is a deliberate, methodical public process. The surprising action is thinking that the federal government can throw money at what they perceive to be a problem, and that would be a sufficient way to buy out a lease. That's just not how public process works."
But the offshore wind power plans for the Central Coast are far from dead. Three leases were sold. While Golden State agreed to end its lease, two other companies still have active leases.
The federal government isn’t supportive of offshore wind power now, but it will be about four years before physical construction gets underway.
Colvin said a new administration could be more receptive to wind energy.
"The amount of work that needs to be done pre-development is a long lead time, and the projects are going to take longer to develop than this current administration, and they will last far longer than this current administration."
Golden State’s project about 50 miles off the coast of Morro Bay was expected to generate about two gigawatts of energy, enough to power around 1.1 million homes. Once the lease is terminated, the Trump Administration could cancel it, making it difficult to revive in the future.
Colvin explained why clean energy advocates are so excited about offshore wind power projects.
"The wind resource itself is very different offshore. We're able to harness more of that power for more hours of the day, more frequently than we can from an onshore resource."
While the Golden State Wind deal with the federal government was the big story on the West Coast, the Department of the Interior announced it had also reached a more than $760 million deal with Bluepoint Wind to return some East Coast offshore wind leases.
The Trump Administration contends that the offshore wind projects are expensive and unreliable. It also argues that the offshore wind projects pose a national security risk. The federal government issued stop-work orders for some East Coast projects, but many of them were overturned in court.
The latest action by the federal government has drawn criticism. Some Democratic members of Congress call it a misuse of taxpayer dollars and want an investigation.
Rep. Salud Carbajal of Santa Barbara said he’s outraged by what he calls a backwards decision to sabotage the Morro Bay Wind Energy Area.
