Understanding the proposed offshore wind projects off the coast of Humboldt takes a lot of work. We at EPIC have been reading environmental studies, taking classes on offshore wind, and attending public meetings so that we can develop as much knowledge about these projects as possible. But at the end of the day, there is only so much you can learn from a text or in a classroom.
So, when Oceantic Network, a nonprofit organization that supports the development of offshore wind, invited us to attend a Floating Offshore Wind Study Tour in Norway to learn more about floating offshore wind, we jumped at the opportunity. This was the second such delegation of North Coast residents to travel to Norway to learn more about floating offshore wind. Tom Wheeler and Matt Simmons from EPIC, along with representatives from several local Tribal Nations and Humboldt Waterkeeper, made the long trip to Norway to witness something that can currently only be seen in very few places around the world — floating offshore wind turbines.
You see, while the first offshore wind farm was developed back in 1991 in Denmark, those earlier offshore wind farms were “fixed-bottom,” i.e. attached to the seafloor. Because the ocean is much deeper off the coast of California, the turbines proposed off our coast would need to float in the water. Floating offshore wind turbines require different technologies and have potentially different kinds of environmental impacts and considerations than fixed-bottom turbines.
Stavanger, Norway is home to the Norwegian Marine Energy Test Center, which hosts the first ever floating offshore wind turbine (deployed in 2009) and RWE's TetraSpar demonstration of a full-scale industrialized offshore foundation (deployed in 2019). These demonstration projects are smaller than the turbines currently proposed for Humboldt because they were built in order to test out the concept of floating offshore wind and specifically to test out different foundation types. However, they have successfully demonstrated that floating offshore wind turbines can operate and generate electricity safely and effectively.
In addition to seeing the floating turbines firsthand, we were also given presentations on current technological advancements, ongoing environmental research and analysis, as well as multiple opportunities to ask questions. These presentations gave us a lot of new information to look into for our offshore wind frequently asked questions website (northcoastoffshorewind.org), and we are excited to share with you more about what we learned.
Over the next decade, as the proposed Humboldt offshore wind projects undergo environmental review and permitting, we will learn a lot more from environmental surveys, studies, and research. But as we’re reading those documents, I think it will be valuable to remember that we saw this type of technology functioning in Norway firsthand. Humboldt’s project is the first of its kind proposed for the West Coast of the United States, but not the first floating offshore wind project in the world, and we have the opportunity to learn from what has been built before.