Gavin Newsom’s plans for offshore wind energy are more fantasy than strategy.
Earlier this year, after the federal government leased 583 square miles of deep-ocean waters off the coast of California for offshore wind farms, California governor Gavin Newsom said that “offshore wind energy has gone from a distant pipedream to a burgeoning reality.” Maybe—but it’s hard to imagine an energy project that is costlier, riskier, or less practical.
When completed, the project is set to deliver 4.5 gigawatts of electricity to the California grid. But because even the steadiest offshore winds blow only intermittently, the average production of the turbines will be around 1.8 gigawatts—just 5 percent of California’s current electricity consumption. If California goes all-electric, as state regulators insist it must, these wind farms will represent, at best, 2 percent of the electricity the state will require. “California is pinning a lot of hopes on an industry that scarcely exists today,” notes an MIT Technology Review article.
