Wait, what is going on with offshore wind again?

I spent the past two weekends tabling at community events to inform the community about proposed offshore wind projects and get their feedback and thoughts. I had a lot of productive conversations, both with supporters and opponents of the projects. But my biggest takeaway was that a lot of folks don’t fully understand the current state of things. So, I thought I’d write this post to give everyone an update on where things currently stand at the end of August 2026. That way we’re at least all on the same page. 

Donald Trump hates offshore wind energy. Ever since the Scottish government decided to build offshore wind turbines off the coast of a golf course he owns, he’s had a vendetta against the industry. So, on his very first day in office in January 2025, he issued a presidential memorandum attacking the offshore wind industry. The memorandum paused permitting for ongoing projects and withdrew from leasing future projects. But that didn’t go far enough for President Trump because there were projects on the East Coast that already had all of their permits and were beginning construction. For those projects, Trump ordered his Secretary of the Interior to begin arbitrarily pulling permits and issuing stop work orders. 

Both of these actions were challenged in court by States and renewable energy advocates. The executive order was struck down because it far exceeded a President’s authority to act unilaterally and without due process. Then, in five separate court cases for five separate stop-work orders, federal judges consistently struck down the President’s actions as arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law. While the President had argued that these projects were a threat to national security, the evidence he presented to the judges to justify the emergency stop work orders was found to be conclusory and unsupported by evidence. In fact, the Department of Defense had already reviewed and signed off on the projects prior to them receiving any permits to begin work. The Trump Administration was unable to present any evidence that the facts had changed, and so the judges felt it was unfair of them to issue stop work orders for already permitted projects. 

That left only one category of offshore wind project for Trump to attack. Projects where an area of the ocean had been leased out to developers to start designing their projects, but no permits had yet been granted. The developers clearly had an interest in these places; they’d paid tens of millions of dollars to lease them, but they had no permission to construct offshore wind projects yet. And with Trump’s illegal pause in permitting, it seemed unlikely that they would be moving forward any time soon. 

For these projects, Trump invented a more straightforward tactic. What if he just used your federal tax dollars to pay the developers to abandon their leases? He was already pilfering the judgment fund to create a $1.776 billion slush fund to defend January 6th rioters and other political allies of his. Why not use that money to pay offshore wind developers to abandon their leases as well? Using these funds, Trump has bought out 3 of the 5 leases off the coast of California, including one of the two Humboldt area leases. The German corporation RWE received $1.2 billion to abandon its offshore leases in California, New York, and Louisiana. This brought the national total amount paid out to offshore wind companies not to build offshore wind to $3.9 billion. The Blue Green Alliance, an NGO that supports partnerships between labor unions and environmentalists, estimates that all of these buybacks have cost the United States 21.15 gigawatts of clean energy and 85,679 jobs. 

The buybacks include language asking the companies to reinvest the funds into fossil fuel projects. However, there is no guarantee that that will occur or that they wouldn’t have occurred regardless of the payouts. Moreover, to the extent that these fossil fuel projects will provide economic benefits they will benefit entirely different communities than those that could have benefitted from offshore wind. And, of course, given the fact that we are in a climate crisis, paying corporations to abandon renewable projects in favor of fossil fuel ones is suicidal. 

A similar coalition of States is challenging these buybacks in court. This time, they are arguing that the payouts violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act by failing to follow the proper procedures for cancelling a lease. Moreover, the use of the judgment fund in this way is illegal. California has filed its own notices of intent to sue and investigative subpoenas against the 3 offshore wind companies that abandoned their leases off our coast. The claims include:

• No hearing before cancellation — in violation of 43 U.S.C. § 1334(a)(2)(A)

• No five-year suspension prior to cancellation — in violation of 43 U.S.C. § 1334(a)(2)(B)

• No notification or coordination with governors of affected states — in violation of 43 U.S.C. §§ 1334(h) and 1337(p)(7)

• Failure to consider required statutory priorities — under 43 U.S.C. § 1337(p)(4) and 30 C.F.R. § 585.102

• Failure to follow lease relinquishment regulations — under 30 C.F.R. § 585.435

• Violation of the amended lease agreement itself (Section 8), which required any cancellation predicated on a threat of harm to include a finding by BOEM of particularized harm that can only feasibly be averted by suspension

• Compensation in excess of the statutory formula — in violation of 43 U.S.C. §§ 1334(a)(2)(C) and 1341(d)

EPIC will be following this litigation closely, as preserving the leases is essential to California meeting its decarbonization goals. 

Okay, so that covers the offshore wind projects themselves. But the offshore wind industry is more than just wind turbines floating in the ocean. It requires a port to build the wind turbines and transmission lines to move the electricity generated. What is the status of those projects?

The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Conservation, and Recreation District is continuing to move forward with permitting its proposed heavy lift marine terminal to support the offshore industry. While the federal government cancelled its grant supporting the project, California continues to support the project. The District has already received an $18 million grant to allow it to conduct environmental review and analysis, a process that could take years. To that end, they are rereleasing the project description in the coming months and soliciting a new round of public feedback and comment. 

EPIC is closely monitoring the project to ensure that it avoids, minimizes, and mitigates as many environmental impacts as possible. For monthly updates on the project’s progress, you can attend the Humboldt Bay Harbor District Board of Commissioners’ monthly board meeting either at their office on Woodley Island or online. Their hope, as I understand it, is that a future Presidential Administration will be more supportive of offshore wind development and put the United States back on track to decarbonize the power grid. So, rather than halting permitting while we wait for that to happen, they are proceeding forward with an aim toward being ready to welcome a new federal administration and potentially new offshore wind developers with a permitted project in 2029. Given the many complex issues that need to be addressed in order to permit a project of this size and the fact that construction will take several years, having a little extra time to work on it is likely a good thing. 

Finally, there’s the transmission lines. As a reminder, the California Independent Systems Operator (CAISO) identified the need for a new substation and two new Humboldt transmission lines in its 2023-2024 transmission plan. The approved projects would connect offshore wind energy to the existing Humboldt grid while also better connecting us to the rest of the State, improving reliability and grid resilience. Our current aging transmission infrastructure is susceptible to outages and in need of an upgrade. CAISO has selected the transmission developer Viridon to construct the projects through a competitive bidding process. As part of that process, Viridon made commitments to keep costs contained as well as to have the transmission lines in service by 2034. 

While no exact route has yet been determined, Viridon has indicated that they intend to construct the new transmission lines parallel to an existing transmission line, except in specific instances where that doesn’t make sense. The existing line starts in the Mitchell Heights neighborhood just east of Myrtletown before climbing southeast to Kneeland and eventually to Bridgeville. From there, it roughly follows Highway 36 out of Humboldt before continuing East to the Redding area. You can look at a map of all existing transmission lines in California here.  Following this existing transmission line should reduce environmental conflicts by allowing the developer to make use of some existing infrastructure and rights-of-way. However, EPIC will still be monitoring the projects closely to once again ensure that they avoid, minimize, and mitigate as many environmental impacts as possible. Here is Viridon’s project website with additional information.

All of that is a lot to keep track of. If you’re ever looking for an update or information about the projects, I encourage you to visit northcoastoffshorewind.org , which we strive to keep updated with information as it develops. Or, if you have any questions about the projects or EPIC’s advocacy, you can always contact me at matt@wildcalifornia.org.