Elias: Gov. Newsom committing to big wind power projects risky right now
There weren’t many causes Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed harder during the just-concluded state legislative session than offshore wind power, something that has been tried in only a few places around America.
For some in the California Legislature, including state Senate President Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, this seems an easy way to modernize the state’s electric grid without risking much pollution, taking advantage of an inexhaustible natural resource — winds that often gust at 40 mph or more.
However, now it’s time for Newsom to go slow before committing California electric customers (who always pay for new generating facilities via their monthly bills) to fund this largely untried renewable energy source. If adopted, a plan to build enough offshore windmills to fill about 6% of California’s electric needs would be America’s largest commitment to offshore wind power.
There is not yet any offshore wind power along the Pacific Coast, but yes, there is offshore wind power on the Atlantic Coast. There’s a small (five-turbine) project off Block Island, Rhode Island. Also, there are a few windmills off Virginia and others off Massachusetts’ Nantucket Island.
Many of those turbines are anchored to the ocean floor in locations where water is shallow even miles offshore. Off California coast, where federal authorities have identified three potential wind power areas (off Morro Bay and Diablo Canyon on the Central Coast and near Eureka on the North Coast), waters are so deep that windmills would have to float, anchored by cables.
The wind turbine industry is already rejoicing over the California possibilities.
“Offshore wind is California’s golden opportunity to generate high-power jobs, spark investments in local communities and provide clean, domestic and reliable power to millions of homes and businesses while helping stabilize electricity prices,” an announcement read from Turn Forward, an organization promoting offshore windmills.
That’s not quite the way some other folks see it. Take the county board of commissioners in Cape May County, New Jersey, where a Danish company proposes a development called Ocean Wind One.
“What’s happening in Nantucket shows we were right to oppose offshore wind power (Cape May County’s stance since 2021),” said a statement from county executive Len Desiderio. He called a recent incident at Nantucket, near Martha’s Vineyard, an “offshore wind environmental catastrophe.”
Some 15 miles off the celebrated beaches of Nantucket, renowned as a summer resort, a development called Vineyard Wind this summer saw one-third of a turbine blade snap off. Industrial fiberglass, paint, foam, adhesive and other objects soon washed up on Nantucket beaches and later onto Cape Cod.
The Cape May commission, working to stave off a larger development near its coast, called this “an environmental catastrophe akin to an oil spill. Vacationers are leaving the beaches or cancelling trips. Tourism on Nantucket has taken a devastating hit.”
Cape May doesn’t want those risks. A new question is whether California should invite new problems of its own. Meanwhile, the nation’s largest investor in wind power, entrepreneur Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, also raises questions about wind power, whether offshore or on dry land.
Yahoo Finance reported in 2023 that “Buffett’s energy division has reported a negative income tax rate for five straight years thanks to billions of dollars worth of tax credits … for producing clean power.”
The firm during the years from 2019 to 2022 took tax credits of $6.1 billion from the federal government, far above its profit levels, thus slashing all its other tax burdens. In one quarter last year, Berkshire Hathaway’s wind power fields collected tax credits of $363 million, far more than its $223 million in actual profits. That made wind farming worth almost $600 million to the company in just one three-month period.
“On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build … wind farms,” said Buffett. “That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
What about all those turbines in places like the Altamont Pass near Livermore and the San Gorgonio Pass northwest of Palm Springs? They’re basically tax credit farms for their owners.
California might or might not avoid environmental disasters from wind turbines. That’s unknown. Some risks are now known, though, and Newsom should be very careful before approving anything more than small, experimental developments.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.