Written by Will Seykora
The White House announced on Tuesday that the development of new wind energy projects off the California Coast has begun. With full support from Gavin Newsom, Biden plans on destroying some of the scenic views of cities like Morro Bay and Eureka in the name of clean energy.
This plan could generate roughly 4.6 Gigawatts of energy, which is enough to power 1.6 million homes. However, in the White House press release, it does not specify Californian homes, only stating “enough to power 1.6 million American homes.” which might concern some Californians who have had to deal with blackouts over the last year due to a poor energy infrastructure based on clean energy.
This plan has been thrown around for a long time however has generally been dismissed due to logistical errors and a strong opposition from the Navy, who views these waters as extremely important to national defense and the quick response of Navy ships should they need to leave port.
The proposed wind farm would be the first large-scale attempt at a floating wind farm as Newsom expects the area to be able to hold 300 or more turbines. However while Newsom brags about size, fishing businesses are furious with the idea. Tom Hafer, president of the Morro Bay Commerical Fishermen’s Organization states “We’re totally against this” “We’ve been consulting with the Castle Wind people for a long time, and we helped pick the spot and developed a memorandum of understanding on an area we thought would be sustainable for us. That was about 120 square miles. This is 399 square miles.”
The amount of fishable land companies would lose from this would all but destroy parts of California’s fishing industry. Not to mention it could negatively affect whales who migrate using the coast of California. No matter what the outcome is, Californians are going to be the ones forced to split the bill when the plan goes wrong due to the lack of planning and lack of transparency from the Biden administration.
