What Would a Future Without Offshore Wind Energy Look Like?

Imagine you just woke up on January 1st, 2046. You go to your kitchen to turn on your electric kettle to make some tea, and you pause to think, “Where is my electricity coming from?” Your house or apartment probably has solar panels on it and maybe a battery to help store that power. But that isn’t enough energy to power your home 24/7, and so you still need to draw power from the electric grid. Somewhere, something is generating electricity, and transmission and distribution lines are bringing that power to your home so that you can brew tea.

Well, since it’s 2046, hopefully, zero fossil fuels are being used to generate that power. California’s landmark legislation SB 100 (De León) requires that zero-carbon resources supply 100% of retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers by December 31, 2045. If you’re interested in how we’re currently doing at meeting that goal, the California Energy Commission publishes an annual report. Right now, in 2025, about ⅔ of our electricity comes from zero-carbon resources. 

In many ways, achieving that last ⅓ will be more difficult than the first ⅔. First, our electricity demand is increasing. The majority of that increase is being caused by the switch from fossil fuels to electricity to meet our transportation and heating needs. But AI and other new technologies are forecasted to increase demand as well. So, we are trying to hit a moving target by increasing our zero-carbon energy supply to meet increasing energy demand.

The other reason achieving that last ⅓ will be more difficult has to do with siting renewable energy. California has already put solar panels and wind turbines in the least controversial places to do so. New proposed renewable energy projects are facing ever-increasing pushback from communities, environmentalists, and Tribal Nations. A report from June 2025 published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School found that restrictions on siting new renewables are becoming more prevalent. Because renewables are intermittent, meaning they don’t generate electricity all the time, we have to build a lot to ensure that there is enough power 24/7. We could build more dispatchable – sometimes referred to as “firm” as opposed to “intermittent”– sources of zero-carbon power, like hydropower and nuclear, but those have the potential for far more environmental impacts. The North Coast should be removing dams, not building new ones! California has had a moratorium in place on new nuclear power plants since 1976 because the federal government has failed to solve the problem of long-term nuclear waste storage.

Prior to the second election of Donald Trump, the plan was to use offshore wind energy to solve this problem. Offshore wind has a higher capacity factor than onshore wind, meaning that it generates power more often. Offshore wind’s capacity factor is so high that it rivals natural gas power plants. The wind blows very consistently offshore due to the fact that the ocean is relatively flat. Those strong, consistent winds lead to strong, consistent electricity generation, which in turn allows offshore wind to act more like a firm source of power than onshore wind or solar. That’s why the California Energy Commission set a goal of deploying 25 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2045. So that when we turn off the last remaining fossil fuel power plant in California, we have enough renewables online to meet demand and keep the lights on. 

But Donald Trump hates wind turbines and is actively trying to sabotage the industry. So investment has started to slow in 2025. With the federal government actively targeting offshore wind, investors have begun to shift their investments to other industries and other countries. But California still had a law requiring 100% of retail sales of electricity to be zero carbon by 2046. So where would that new power come from? A new analysis by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) offers some insight. 

Every year, the CPUC conducts an analysis to determine where the State needs to build new transmission lines in the future. The CPUC’s analysis estimates how much demand will increase, where new electricity generation will be constructed, and other factors to get a sense of where new transmission lines ought to be built. In this year’s analysis, the “Base Case” – that is, what CPUC thinks is the most likely scenario – still assumes that California will develop offshore wind power, but the CPUC also modeled what they called a “Limited Wind” sensitivity case. In the “limited wind” sensitivity case, the CPUC assumed that there would be reduced onshore wind built before 2045 and that no offshore wind would be built at all off the coast of California. The CPUC modeled this scenario in order to be prepared for a potential situation where no offshore wind turbines are supplying power to the grid, but they still have a legal obligation to supply California with 100% zero-carbon power. 

So what did the model say? Well, to make up for the loss of wind power, the model assumed that California would have to build or purchase an additional 4.1 GW of geothermal, 14.7 GW of solar, 8.3 GW of 8-hour lithium-ion batteries, and 2.1 GW of pumped hydro storage or compressed air storage. Basically, without offshore wind, we need a lot more solar and batteries (both lithium-based and alternatives like pumped hydro) to meet our power demand. Because solar generates less electricity per acre than wind, it means covering more sensitive land with solar farms than under the wind scenario. The recent controversial Sacramento Coyote Creek Solar Project shows why that is an issue.  It also means mining considerably more lithium, which has its own environmental impacts. I did some back-of-the-envelope math and came up with 8.3 GW of 8-hour lithium-ion batteries requiring 45,920 tons of mined lithium carbonate to be constructed. For context, a typical iPhone contains about 0.3 grams of lithium, and a typical Electric Vehicle uses 17 pounds of lithium. These increased demands on other forms of renewable energy shouldn’t be surprising.

Because Offshore Wind generates power at night and during the winter when solar panels are less optimized, installing offshore wind can reduce the total installed capacity required in zero-emissions grids. That means fewer acres of land and fewer mined materials are being used for renewable energy projects. In addition, OSW can help with electric bills. Because OSW is cheap to operate, it displaces expensive energy resources throughout the day, lowering energy bills.  Offshore wind is particularly effective at lowering costs during the winter, when demand for natural gas is high. So, a future without offshore wind would likely also mean more land used for onshore renewable energy projects, more minerals mined to support them, and higher prices.

Or, my initial assumption could be wrong, and we could still be using fossil fuels to generate electricity in 2045. Perhaps that potential future is the most chilling of all. The three-year average global temperature rise for 2023-2025 is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time. 1.5 degrees of warming was the goal established by the Paris Agreement in order to avoid catastrophic impacts to low-lying island nations, developing nations, and coral reefs. If we’re still burning fossil fuels for energy – something we know how to produce without fossil fuels today – twenty years from now, it would mean we have completely failed this goal. That’s the future I’m terrified by, and it’s why EPIC supports responsible renewable energy development.