Dan Walters: The Pacific Ocean could be California’s clean-energy savior

From the earliest exploration by European explorers of what grew to become California, its place on the western coast of the North American continent has been its most essential attribute.

Its shoreline allowed that exploration and the event of outposts whereas many of the continent was nonetheless a mysterious wilderness. It fostered the 1849 gold rush that hastened California statehood. Its seashores drew thousands and thousands of tourists. It made California the arsenal and staging level for World Battle II’s Pacific Theater and, lastly, it grew to become a focus of world oceanic commerce.

Might California’s coastal waters now turn into its savior, ending ever-increasing shortages of water and electrical power that threaten the state’s financial and societal future?

Sure it might, however provided that California’s political and civic leaders overcome their tendency to muff large public works — as symbolized by the bullet prepare’s historical past of over-spending and under-performing, many years of foot-dragging on much-needed water storage initiatives, and crippling bottlenecks on the state’s ports.

Lastly, after many years of dithering, California’s Byzantine paperwork is lastly warming as much as desalination of seawater as an important piece of the state’s water provide, though it nonetheless resists large initiatives that would have actual impression on shortages because it does in different water-short nations.

In the meantime, California is simply starting to understand the potential of offshore windmills to generate large quantities of renewable electrical power that will assist shut the state’s present provide hole, fill monumental new calls for, and meet the state’s formidable objectives for ending its dependence on fossil fuels.

Final week, the federal authorities performed auctions for wind-generation energy growth rights on two oceanic websites, one 20 miles west of Morro Bay and the opposite off Humboldt County.

Advocates imagine the websites might generate as much as 8 gigawatts {of electrical} energy, about one-sixth of the state’s present peak energy demand on sizzling summer season days and a few third of the state’s purpose of 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045.

“Offshore wind is a essential element to attaining our world-leading clear power objectives and this sale is an historic step on California’s march towards a future freed from fossil fuels,” Newsom stated in a press release.

Nevertheless, given the state’s sorry document on big-impact initiatives, will it actually occur? Will we, as state plans now counsel, actually see offshore energy start to stream into the grid inside 10 years?

Don’t depend on it.

The floating platforms to help the immense windmills, anchored in additional than 2,000 ft of water, face essential consideration from environmental teams and a phalanx of federal and state regulatory hurdles. Additionally they would require onshore help amenities in coastal communities the place resistance to growth is culturally ingrained, plus cables to deliver the ability to shore and in depth expansions of transmission amenities to tie into the grid.

The timeframe to make all of this occur, because the state assumes in its total plan to shift California to renewable electrical energy, could be very quick. We’re now 22 years into the twenty first century and supposedly all of this is able to happen in simply 23 extra years — concurrently with many different parts of decarbonization, corresponding to shifting to battery- or hydrogen-powered vehicles and vans and eliminating pure gasoline in properties, enterprise and business.

It might take an immense cultural change within the state’s governing equipment to make all of it occur by the designated deadline, a way of urgency, a unity of goal, and way more managerial competence than California has mustered within the final half-century.

The ocean might, certainly, be our savior. Theoretically, it might present limitless quantities of fresh water and clear energy. Nevertheless it gained’t occur except we make it occur.

Dan Walters has been a journalist for practically 60 years, spending all however a couple of of these years working for California newspapers. His commentary comes by way of CalMatters.org, a public curiosity journalism enterprise dedicated to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it issues. For extra, go to calmatters.org/commentary.