Companies and public officials in the Northwest had high hopes that the offshore wind industry could inject great quantities of cash and jobs here.
But they’ve encountered a four-year snag.
Just hours into his second term, President Donald Trump ordered a halt to any future offshore wind leases and a slow-walk review process for existing leases, dimming the future of an industry fast expanding in other countries around the world.
Already the West Coast’s offshore wind prospects lagged greatly behind East Coast projects, which are up and spinning, and now experts say they’re unsure of the future here.
“Hopefully this is a matter of weathering a four-year storm,” said Ben Ackers, CEO of PelaStar, a local company developing offshore technologies.
Washington needs new sources of energy as utilities shift away from fossil fuels and power demand surges.
Among some companies, enthusiasm for wind power, for now, has waned under the Trump administration, Ackers said.
Meanwhile, other countries around the world continue to invest in the technology as scientists warn that the continued use of fossil fuels will warm our planet to dangerous new heights.
What’s the deal with offshore wind?
Offshore wind turbines have been spinning for decades. The first such wind farm launched in 1991 off the coast of Denmark. The idea is to take centuries-old technology and place the turbines out to sea, where both space and wind are plentiful.
But offshore turbines are fraught with controversy and challenges. Opponents worry about the structures scarring waterfront views, killing birds or even harming undersea life.
As these renewable technologies become less expensive and efficient, fossil fuel interests also worry about losing their share of the energy market and lobby heavily against the technology.
Finding the right location for wind farms can be difficult too. For offshore locations, the federal government doles out leases through the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Offshore wind farms are already up and running on the Atlantic Coast, though. The Bock Island Wind Farm, south of Rhode Island, was the first, launching in 2016.
The United States has enough offshore wind turbines spinning to power about 60,000 homes. Offshore projects off Europe’s coasts are much further along, however, and can generate more than 100 times that much power.
And all of the United States’ offshore electricity comes from the East Coast.
Why is the West Coast so far behind?
Port of Seattle Commissioner Ryan Calkins figures there are two main reasons why the West Coast is so far behind. First, we haven’t had as dire of a need for additional electricity generation, Calkins said. Especially in Washington, which relies heavily on hydropower.
And second, the waters off the West Coast are far deeper than off the East Coast. Thousands of feet deeper.
So rather than turbines grounded in the ocean floor, any offshore wind farms out west would have to float, Calkins said.
While there are a few examples of floating wind farms in the world, they’re less common. The added complication has slowed development here, but companies like Ackers’ are looking for ways to expand.
That’s not to say there’s been no progress.
Developers have proposed leasing sites off the coast of Washington. The state is still studying the prospect. For a while, Oregon seemed sure to wade into offshore waters but momentum has stalled in recent months.
California is further along.
Five leases have been approved by the bureau, to be built dozens of miles off the California coast.
As those projects moved forward, Calkins and Ackers said they had hoped Puget Sound would capture much of that work. The turbines and their floating platforms would have to be assembled closer to their final location but much of the earlier production work could be done using Seattle’s deep-water port.
California’s offshore wind
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has already approved five leases for commercial wind power off the coast of California. Together they occupy about 370,000 acres, slightly larger than the city of Los Angeles.
That means building the platforms, turbine towers, mooring systems, anchors and even the vessels to construct and maintain the offshore platforms, Ackers said.
All of which would bring money and jobs into the region, Calkins said.
“If Puget Sound ports get a crack at this business it will mean a generation’s worth of welding jobs, machinists jobs, electrician jobs and shipbuilding jobs,” Calkins said. “It truly is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
For that sort of investment to make sense, though, Ackers said companies would want to see more building potential than just the five California leases. Otherwise the work would stop as soon as those wind farms were built.
Will the West Coast catch up?
Not under the Trump administration.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has already halted any potential new offshore wind leases and postponed or canceled meetings on existing leases.
All this comes as a disappointment, Ackers said, because his company — and its parent company, Glosten — had intentionally shifted their focus to West Coast offshore wind, especially considering the vast sums of money made available through the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Now, they’re beginning to regret that strategic decision, Ackers said.
If American companies can’t pencil out the domestic work, then perhaps foreign companies like South Korea or Singapore will capture the jobs, Calkins said.
This uncertainty compounds with Trump’s tariffs, raising prices for imports and exports in the renewable energy sector. In his second term he has been increasingly hostile toward the concept of limiting climate change, and he has doubled down on fossil fuels at a time when the global scientific community understands the need to shift toward renewable energy and cut emissions as quickly as possible.
Even as renewables become more affordable, Trump said during his first moments back in office that the country will shift further toward oil and gas. He claims the move will lower energy costs.
“We aren’t going to do the wind thing,” Trump said just hours after his inauguration last month.
What other options do we have?
While the timeline for West Coast wind power is uncertain, perhaps California can continue to build out its own port infrastructure to continue development after Trump’s second term, said Shana Lee Hirsch, associate director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center, in an email.
Meanwhile, a couple of other options remain in play for generating electricity out on the ocean, said Hirsch, who is also a professor at the University of Washington. Companies, including some based in the Puget Sound region, are exploring ways to create power using energy from ocean waves or even the daily tides.
While wave and tidal energy sources remain viable options, Hirsch said Trump’s posturing has affected the research and development phase for these technologies, an area in which the United States had been poised to be a top global player.
“This is a huge blow to momentum in marine and offshore renewable energy, but also to innovation, engineering, and technology more generally,” Hirsch said.
