In a significant setback for California’s effort to build hundreds off floating offshore wind turbines in the Pacific Ocean to boost renewable energy, the Trump administration has cancelled nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for one of the state’s most high-profile projects.
On Friday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that $426.7 million which had been approved last year by the Biden Administration to help build a new marine terminal in Humboldt Bay near Eureka with huge cranes, warehouses and wharfs to assemble and deploy the giant floating turbines along the California and Oregon coasts would be revoked.
The proposed project, the largest of its kind on the West Coast, is the latest target in Trump’s ongoing efforts to block construction of offshore wind projects around the United States.
“Wasteful wind projects are using resources that could otherwise go towards revitalizing America’s maritime industry,” Duffy said in a statement.
Duffy also revoked federal funding that had been awarded by the Biden administration to 11 other offshore wind projects, totaling $252 million, in Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Michigan.
Trump has opposed wind energy ever since the government in Scotland allowed turbines near a golf course he owned in 2011.
On Tuesday, California leaders blasted the decision as a short-sighted move. They said it could cost the state construction jobs and help other countries, such as China, the United Kingdom and Denmark, which already have deployed thousands of offshore wind turbines, expand a competitive edge over the United States in a fast-growing technology.
“If it’s a day ending in Y, it’s another day the Trump administration is assaulting clean energy and infrastructure projects – hurting business and killing jobs in rural areas, and ceding our economic future to China,” said Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Some of the floating turbines planned for California could be up to 1,100 feet tall — taller than the tallest skyscrapers in San Francisco and Los Angeles — with huge triangular floating bases bigger than the baseball fields at Oracle Park or Dodger Stadium. They would be deployed more than 20 miles offshore so they couldn’t be seen from beaches.
The structures are so large they can’t fit under the Golden Gate Bridge, which is one reason the more rural Humboldt Bay was selected as a place to assemble and tow them out to sea.
Newsom has made offshore wind and important part of California’s future clean energy plans. He set a goal 5,000 megawatts of ocean wind power installed by 2030 — the equivalent of 10 natural-gas fired power plants — to help California reach 100% clean electricity by 2045 to reduce smog and greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden also made offshore wind a centerpiece of his renewable energy plans, setting a national goal of 30,000 megawatts by 2030.
In 2022, the Biden administration awarded wind power leases to five companies that bid $757 million for two large areas off Humboldt County and off Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County. Those leases remain in place, even though Trump put a moratorium on new offshore wind leases nationwide in January. California and 15 other states have sued in an attempt to overturn that decision.
Trump also raised the ire of construction unions and officials in New England last month when he ordered work halted on a wind project off Rhode Island that was under construction and 80% complete.
Work on that $4 billion project, called Revolution Wind, began in 2023, and it was expected to provide enough electricity for 350,000 homes starting next year.
“To stop a project that’s 80% complete, lay off hundreds and hundreds of tradesmen and women and other people that are supplying that industry for no apparent reason… makes no sense,” Michael Sabitoni, president of the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council told the Associated Press. “It’s one of the most asinine moves I’ve ever seen in my career. And I’ve been doing this for 38 years.”
Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee said he and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont “will pursue every avenue to reverse the decision.”
The California project in Humboldt Bay is planned for a 180-acre site formerly occupied by a timber pulp mill. In recent decades, the logging industry in the area has declined steadily.
Supporters of the $853 million project said Tuesday that they will continue to move forward with planning, hoping to secure state funding, although the loss of half their project’s price tag is likely to delay the project by several years.
“News like this is not fun,” said Chris Mikkelsen, executive director of the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, which is planning the project. “But with it comes opportunity. The state hasn’t changed its goals. Why would we? We are going to double down. Our resolve is stronger than before.”
The district had hoped to break ground by the end of next year and open by 2029. That could be delayed for several years now, Mikkelsen said, as the project looks for alternative funding sources. One could be Proposition 4, a climate bond passed by California voters in November. It contains $475 million for offshore wind port projects, with another leading candidate being the Port of Long Beach.
Dan Kammen, a longtime energy professor at UC Berkeley, said large utilities could also provide a source of funding. He said that offshore wind is key to California’s energy future because it blows at night and early in the morning, opposite to when solar power is strongest.
“Losing this money is a big, bad deal,” he said. “There’s no sugar-coating it. But California is a big, powerful economy and it is worth it for us to get it built. Finding the funding will be no small task. I am hopeful we will.”