Earlier this month, the California Energy Commission met to talk about its draft report to evaluate and quantify the maximum feasible capacity of offshore wind to achieve reliability, ratepayer, employment, and decarbonization benefits and to set megawatt offshore wind planning goals for 2030 and 2045.
The California law AB 525 tells CEC to make three interim work products. This report is the first of those three. By the end of this year, the CEC must finish and send in a preliminary assessment of economic benefits related to seaport investments and workforce development needs, as well as a permitting roadmap.
AB 525's final requirement is that by June 30, 2023, the CEC must work with federal, state, and local agencies, as well as a wide range of stakeholders, to create a strategic plan for offshore wind energy developments built in federal waters off the coast of California and send it to the California Natural Resources Agency and the Legislature.
What's Important in the Off-Shore Wind Report
The CEC set a preliminary planning goal of 3 GW for 2030 and 10-15 GW for 2045, depending on how far technology has come. The CEC made it clear that these are just planning goals and do not set a minimum level of procurement or create procurement requirements. Three gigawatts of power could come from either a full buildout of the Morro Bay Wind Energy Area (WEA) or a combination of partial buildouts in the Morro Bay WEA and the Humboldt WEA.
