Offshore Wind Coalition Building
The Brightline Podcast: Season 2, Episode 1
What happens when a construction worker, environmental leader, and environmental justice advocate meet at a snack table?
You get Offshore Wind Now, a broad coalition of environmental, labor, and environmental justice groups supporting a clean energy source that could supercharge California’s economy, dramatically improve air quality, and stave off the impacts of the climate crisis.
Over the next year, our nonprofit Brightline is excited to bring you 10 episodes that explore environmental justice in California. We’ll interview guests who will discuss air quality issues, green jobs, and how the state can meet its ambitious climate targets. Stay tuned for more episodes!
Transcript:
Dan: You know, this is really the cats and the dogs sitting down and agreeing to get stuff done.
AUBREY : This is The Brightline Podcast from Brightline Defense. We explore environmental justice issues, or EJ issues, in the Bay Area and California, highlighting the work of community-based organizations, including our own. My name’s Aubrey, and I’m so excited to be back for season two! We’ve got some great episodes lined up for you all, from open space in the Tenderloin to climate health career building. But today, we’re kicking things off with a look into an exciting new frontier for renewable energy in California, and the coalition that’s leading the way. You see, it all started back in 2016, when three unlikely collaborators found themselves standing around a snack table.
DAN: It’s hard to say an exact time, but about three or four years ago, the three of us kept sort of bumping into each other at some of these offshore wind conferences.
AUBREY: This is Dan Jacobson, a senior advisor for non-profit Environment California.
DAN: And we started just to meet at sort of lunch tables or, you know, the cookie tray that they have at those conferences where you just sort of go up and grab an iced tea and some cookies and sort of sit down.
AUBREY: That “we” is Director of Brightline, Eddie Ahn.
EDDIE: Hey there, Aubrey.
AUBREY: And union leader Jeff Hunerlach.
Jeff: We started talking and you know we had a lot of conversations.
DAN: And we were kind of realizing that the three of us together were creating a group who were advocates for offshore wind but who didn’t see things from the industry or from the developers point of view.
AUBREY: These moments at the catering table- these first casual conversations between Dan, Jeff, and Eddie- were the beginning of something big. You see, these three advocates come from different worlds with histories of conflict. So to understand how this unlikely coalition came together around the snack table to change California’s energy future, we need to back up a little. Because this story doesn’t start at a conference. It actually begins in Humboldt County, California.
JEFF [field recording]: Well I am here in Humboldt Bay. We have about 15 mph winds.
AUBREY: Jeff is a representative of the operating engineers local three, a construction union in Humboldt.
JEFF: We run equipment, the cranes, the dozers, barges. If it has a seat on it, we operate it.
Aubrey: Humboldt is a rural county on the northern coast of California, with the second largest natural bay in the state. Its redwood forests and port once supported a wealth of industrial development.
JEFF: Historically, it was a logging community way back. And there were ships in here. [old harbor, ship sounds] I mean, I’m told 30 or 40 ships a month. And maybe even more. Industry was here. I mean, it was a poppin’ place.
And then nothing.
AUBREY: The cause of the timber industry’s decline in Humboldt is complicated. But there’s no doubt that environmentalist activism to protect old growth forests and endangered species played a major part.
So, as the timber industry slowed down, sawmills shuttered, the port grew quiet, and jobs in the area dried up.
JEFF: So what we have here, we have about 475 acres of waterfront [roperty in our bay that has deteriorated because there’s no industry, no sustainable industry. There’s a lot of big ideas, but they’ve all been boom and bust. So this it’s the last deepwater port on the West Coast. We have an opportunity for port development manufacturing. I mean, we have more property available than down the rest of the coast of California.
AUBREY: And that property, well, it’s really windy.
JEFF: Not sure if you can hear the wind, but it would definitely would be blowing a whole lot more 20 miles out.
AUBREY: That’s where offshore wind development comes in. Now, if you don’t know a lot about offshore wind, you’re not alone. It’s a pretty new technology in the United States, and it hasn’t been implemented on the West Coast at all.
LAURA: Offshore wind is this remarkable resource. Basically, if you go about 20 to 30 miles offshore and even further, we have these winds that just blow really, really hard. It’s like a massive wind tunnel.
AUBREY: This is director of Environment California, Laura Deehan.
LAURA: So even after the sun has set and solar energy stops being produced, the wind is blowing, in fact, picking up. And so in parts of Europe and in Asia, there have been efforts to catch that wind and use it to turn turbines and create electricity.
AUBREY: But development in Humboldt would require an even newer technology.
LAURA: And offshore wind in California, it’s going to be different because our coastline, the geography of it is this kind of continental shelf shelf that just drops off, quite close to the shoreline. And so the bottom of the coast is quite deep. And so what we’re going to be doing in California is floating offshore wind.
AUBREY: Traditional offshore wind involves drilling massive rigs into the seafloor. But the Humboldt bay is around 3,000 feet deep. So, instead of using the traditional fixed bottom method, these turbines will float on buoyant platforms, just barely visible from shore. Undersea cables will anchor the turbines in place, and bring all that clean wind energy to onshore electric hubs.
This technology has been used off the coasts of Scotland, Portugal, and Japan. And back in 2016, people were starting to talk about how California could be the perfect next spot. Which brings us back to that legendary snack table. Here’s Dan from Environment California again.
DAN: So the three of us getting together said, Hey, we all have a self-interest here. Our self-interest is ultimately a public interest. And so we decided to form a very loose sort of affiliation. At the start is was called Offshore Wind Now.
AUBREY: Offshore Wind Now started to bring together labor, environmental organizations, environmental justice advocates, local elected officials, and offshore wind researchers. But Jeff was skeptical at first.
JEFF: The concept, I thought, wow. Clean energy. A huge project. And a huge project brings lots of man hours to not just my union, but all the unions. It gives long stability, career jobs, But it’s been the norm that, you know, these people come in and it’s either a boom or bust idea and it never goes anywhere.
And so I thought, wow, this could be something. In the back of my mind, I kind of said, “Wow, yeah, another pipe dream,” you know?
AUBREY: The coalition also had to navigate a history of tension.
LAURA there’s a lot of examples where labor and environmental groups aren’t perfectly aligned because some of the best paid jobs that are labor jobs are actually in the industries of old that we are currently harming our earth. And so, you know, when you think about the oil industry that makes up so much of the economy today. A lot of the people whose job it is get more of those labor jobs. There are going to be, facing that conflict and feeling like, “oh, wait a minute, we don’t we don’t want to see change if it’s going to mean fewer of these high paid union jobs.”
AUBREY: Through working on the Offshore Wind Now coalition, Jeff saw the incredible potential benefits it could offer to Humboldt, including thousands of new construction, operation and maintenance jobs.
JEFF: And if you’re going to tie in supply chain, you know, you could probably add another 2500 folks. I would say that the job opportunities for our local people would be, you know, off the chart.
AUBREY: Those numbers don’t even include the hundreds of additional jobs from work on the transmission lines that will distribute the energy produced from the turbines, although the specific numbers will depend on just how much offshore wind is actually developed. And these aren’t just any old jobs.
JEFF: Making sure that you have a pension, making sure you have vacation pay, making sure you’re paid properly. And that’s what the unions do. We’re professional, skilled and trained workers. That means something. And skilled and trained workers means that our workers have went through a California approved apprenticeship program, six, 7000 hours of training.
AUBREY: And although those apprenticeship programs might include some offshore-specific skillbuilding, Jeff says that most of his union members are already prepared to get working.
JEFF: I mean, look, in my industry, a crane- it doesn’t matter if you’re picking up a piece of I-beam or if you pick it up a head unit for a wind turbine or a blade- the crane still picks it up. So that aspect doesn’t change.
AUBREY: Laura and Dan over at Environment California were also interested in offshore wind. But they had their own concerns.
LAURA: So, yeah, so it is a real tension that, you know, we want to literally build an entire new energy economy as fast as we possibly can to move away from this dependence on fossil fuels. But actually tapping into it and moving it to the cities where people live is going to require building And so I think what, you know, our organization and a lot of my friends in the environmental community have been grappling with is how do we do this? You know, how do we do this, right? What is the right balance to strike around getting that clean energy built as fast as possible, while also, you know, minimizing the disruption that’s going to be inevitable on our wildlife and on nature whether it’s in the ocean or in the desert or in the forests.
AUBREY: Brightline brought its own priorities to the table, including uplifting local voices and advocating for benefits to frontline communities. With all these goals in mind, The coalition started showing up to more conferences and events.
DAN: And at some point, Assemblymember David Chiu from San Francisco, heard about this. Pulled us into his office and said, hey, wait, this seems great. Why can’t we run a bill on this? We tried to do it the first year, but that was the first year of COVID. We stayed together working together and doing research and releasing reports, sort of taking advantage of all that time.
AUBREY: They released a report that outlined the benefits of offshore wind for California, including how Local and Targeted Hiring practices can strengthen offshore wind’s skilled and trained workforce, creating quality, family sustaining jobs for impacted communities. It also highlighted potential improvements to air quality for people living near natural gas peaker plants.
DAN: In 2021 we then introduced the bill through the strength of Assemblymember Chiu and the coalition work that he did inside the Capitol to get people like the lieutenant governor and a Republican like Jordan Cunningham. And I think at the end we probably had about 20 coauthors on the bill.
Aubrey: And then, the moment of truth. After years of research, trust building, and compromise, could Offshore Wind Now actually turn their vision into reality?
DAN: The bill ended up going through the legislative process and only received one no vote, which is, you know, almost historic in a state where, you know, usually Democrats and Republicans never agree, but in this case, they, you know, agreed almost universally. And it got onto the governor’s desk and he signed it. And that could have been the end of the coalition right there. That’s what we had set out to do.
AUBREY: With backing from President Biden’s Executive Order Supporting Offshore Wind Development, AB 525 directs California state agencies to create a strategic plan for utility-scale development by 2023 — coordinating the many state and local agencies involved. The California Energy Commission voted to adopt the goal of 2–5 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045. That’s enough to power 25 million homes by midcentury, and development in Humboldt is key to making it happen.
All of this is a huge win for the state, and for Offshore Wind Now. It’s also an exciting bellwether for future collaboration.
DAN: We said we probably need to keep this going even after the bill has been signed, because for really for two reasons. One is that, you know, there’s a lot of work in the implementation of the bill and sort of coordinating all of the work that has to happen. But the other is that we honestly believe that if we can work together on this one to help solve some of the worst impacts of climate change. Are there other trickier issues that having this kind of friendship, having this kind of support among one another, creates a path to getting more complicated issues solved in an over the beer kind of discussion. You know, this is really the cats and the dogs sitting down and agreeing to get stuff done.
JEFF: So our friendship is near and dear. You know, I’m up there, they’re down there. It doesn’t happen often. But every once in a while we cross paths and, you know, we can have a beer together and laugh and giggle and we don’t talk about nothing but offshore wind.
JEFF [field recording]: We are lucky to have this kind of wind here in Humboldt Bay…this is awesome.
AUBREY: Here at Brightline, we’ve got some exciting updates to our offshore wind development work. So I thought I’d bring on our policy associate, Sarah and our executive director Eddie, to fill us in. Hey guys.
EDDIE: Hey again Aubrey! Things are moving quickly with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moving to lease the Humboldt and Morro Bay Wind Energy Areas in late 2022.
SARAH: This leasing is just the first step to getting steel in the water and achieving the California Energy Commissions’ goals of 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045. We’re likely to see a lot of movement in the development of critical transmission infrastructure, ports, and other supply chain needs in the coming years.
EDDIE: There’s quite a bit of environmental compliance coming too when developers submit their plans for further site assessments and development plans for how many wind turbines and where!
SARAH: Brightline is covering the path forward in our upcoming reports. We’re especially excited to continue working with the coalition and see public engagement opportunities at the local, state, and federal levels moving forward.
EDDIE: As large-scale clean energy projects, offshore wind can provide up to 25% of the state’s power. There’s a lot of learning to do, like at a Fall 2022 offshore wind trip in Scotland, Denmark, and Germany. Brightline went with an official delegation from California that involved government agencies, native american tribes, labor union representatives, and other community-based organizations. With all these moving parts, we’re working toward empowering communities while building a sustainable energy future!
AUBREY: I can’t wait to see all of these plans come to life. Thanks so much, Sarah and Eddie.
AUBREY: This episode was written and produced by me, Aubrey Calaway. Original music by Maya Glicksman . Thank you to Eddie Ahn, Cecilia Mejia, Sarah Xu and Maya Glicksman for support on research and writing, and to Jeff Hunerlach, Dan Jacobson, and Laura Deehan. This podcast is funded by the Environmental Justice Small Grants from the California EPA.
For more information about Brightline, you can visit our website at BrightlineDefense.org or on social media @brightlinedefense. You can also find a transcript of this episode on our Medium Blog.
And finally, don’t forget to give us a follow and leave a review if you enjoyed the show. We are so excited to continue exploring Bay Area environmental justice issues with you, so please stay tuned for more from us, wherever you get your podcasts. Take care.