Category: Publications

Our latest report estimates the ratepayer impacts over time associated with developing major new infrastructure – including a substation and two 500kV transmission lines – to enable offshore wind power from the Humboldt Wind Energy Area to reach the broader California electric grid.

This analysis focuses on the two transmission projects approved by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO): (i) a new 500 kV substation, plus a transmission line connecting the Humboldt Bay region to the Collinsville substation (near Pittsburg), and (ii) a second 500 kV line, extending from Humboldt Bay to the Fern Road substation (northeast of Redding). These projects are currently scheduled to come online by the end of 2034. The sponsor (developer) for both projects is California Grid Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Viridon Holdings LLC (Viridon).

Our findings show that Viridon’s recoverable costs, when spread across all customers on the CAISO-managed grid over the expected 50-year project lifetime, result in an estimated average cost to ratepayers of $0.28/MWh – or approximately $1.68 per year for the average California household (in 2025 dollars). 

As shown below, ratepayer costs associated with this transmission development are expected to peak in 2035 (when the projects come online) at $0.75/MWh – $4.52/year for the average household – and decline steadily to $0.03/MWh by 2083.

Figure 1: Ratepayer impact over time in 2025 dollars (10-year rolling averages)

Download the full report.

Learn more about our offshore wind research.

For more information, contact: schatzenergy@humboldt.edu or 707-826-4345. 

Important note: The Schatz Center is committed to providing research that is accessible to everyone. If you encounter any barriers while using this document or require the information in an alternative format, please contact us at schatzenergy@humboldt.edu or 707-826-4345.

UPDATE: 7/16/25

• Webinar recording

REGISTER HERE

Thursday, July 10, from 2:30-4:30 pm (PST) 

For offshore wind energy projects to be developed in California, specialized port facilities—known as “staging and integration” sites—must be built to stage, assemble, and integrate massive floating offshore wind turbines before they are towed out to the designated offshore wind energy areas. This webinar will describe the key findings from our recently published report, Permitting for Port Infrastructure to Support Offshore Wind in California, and discuss permitting requirements for staging and integration sites, including those relating to Tribal consultation and public engagement. The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with staff from the California State Lands Commission and California Coastal Commission to discuss each agency’s role in permitting these types of projects. 

Panelists: 

• Moderator: Awbrey Yost, Senior Policy Analyst, Schatz Energy Research Center
• Amy Vierra, Renewable Energy Specialist, California State Lands Commission
• Catherine Mitchell, North Coast Harbor Analyst, California Coastal Commission 
• Dani Ziff, South Coast District Supervisor, California Coastal Commission

REGISTER for this webinar

About the POWC   

This webinar is being hosted by the Pacific Offshore Wind Consortium (POWC, pronounced pow-sea), which is a joint effort between three research centers: the Schatz Energy Research Center at Cal Poly Humboldt, the Pacific Marine Energy Center at Oregon State University, and the Center for Coastal Marine Sciences at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. These universities are all housed in and supported by the coastal communities that are anticipated to host floating offshore wind development. Together, the consortium aims to advance three pillars: (i) research and innovation, (ii) university-level workforce education and professional development, and (iii) community and Tribal engagement and knowledge exchange. Learn more about the POWC here. 

Additional resources

• If you’d like to receive emails about our offshore wind research and details on related webinars and presentations, please send us an email at windstudies@schatzcenter.org.
• Learn more about our offshore wind research.

Our new report, Permitting for Port Infrastructure to Support Offshore Wind in California, identifies the numerous permitting and planning processes required to build port infrastructure that is necessary for offshore wind energy development in the state. 

For offshore wind energy projects to be developed in California, specialized port facilities—known as “staging and integration” sites—must be built to stage, assemble, and integrate massive floating offshore wind turbines before they are towed out to the designated offshore wind energy areas. Because assembled turbines may float approximately 1,100 feet above the water, these port sites must be located in areas without height restrictions, such as bridges. As a result, very few suitable locations exist in California and permitting these staging and integration projects is complex. 

Our report identifies the approximately 20 authorizations from federal, state, and local agencies that staging and integration project developers may need to obtain, and develops a potential permitting timeline based on existing statutory and regulatory deadlines. The report’s analysis applies statewide, but is also specifically applied to projects currently proposed in Wigi (Humboldt Bay) and the Port of Long Beach.  

The report also provides an in-depth analysis of:

• The key permitting processes and applicable standards for the environmental review that will holistically consider these projects–including those by the California Coastal Commission, ports and harbor districts, and the California State Lands Commission in some cases.
  
• Recent legislation that aims to consolidate permitting for offshore wind energy projects and address the impact of these projects on fisheries. The report also identifies areas within these new laws needing clarification, particularly regarding agency responsibilities for issuing permits, Tribal consultation requirements, and compensatory mitigation for unavoidable impacts to fisheries.
  
• The mandatory requirements for Tribal consultation and public engagement during the environmental review and key permitting processes for these projects. The report also analyzes recent state legislation aimed at creating more meaningful government-to-government consultation and a shared responsibility for resource management and conservation decisions within a Tribal Nation’s ancestral lands and waters.

To read the full report and learn more about the permitting landscape for California’s offshore wind port infrastructure, visit schatzcenter.org/publications. For more information, contact: schatzenergy@humboldt.edu or 707-826-4345.

In 2020, our team began a collaboration with H. T. Harvey & Associates to understand seabird vulnerability to offshore wind within the marine waters off Southern California to Central Oregon.

• H. T. Harvey & Associates led an effort to understand where seabirds have been observed, based on decades of existing data, and how those recorded species typically behave within the vertical air column in response to wind speed.
• Simultaneously, the Schatz Center team analyzed wind speeds and associated power generation potential across the region – and then integrated the bird vulnerability framework with the wind power generation model.

Our goal was to illuminate potential tradeoffs between collision vulnerability and offshore wind power generation, and to understand the likelihood of a given species to be within the strike-vulnerable zone of a rotating wind turbine. (Note: just as crossing a street is not equivalent to being hit by a car, assessing which birds may fly at heights within the rotor-swept zone of a wind turbine does not predict a number of strikes, but instead highlights a potential vulnerability for birds of that species. Future studies will examine seabird avoidance and attraction behaviors in response to turbine infrastructure.)

For large floating offshore wind turbines such as those proposed for development along California’s Outer Continental Shelf, the base of the rotor-swept zone would be at least 25 meters above sea level. Our study uses a more conservative measure starting at 10 meters above sea level, which aligns with existing observational data. Our results indicate that for 44 species of seabirds found across the study area – from Point Conception, CA to Newport, OR – most are predicted to fly below 10 meters, with approximately 8% of the seabird community flying at or above 10 meters at any given time. These higher-flyers are dominated numerically by the seasonally abundant sooty shearwater, a dynamic-soaring species that uses high wind speeds to obtain high flight heights and soar for long distances, as well as several gull species.

Our assessments encompassed all waters in the study area that are shallow enough to support floating OSW mooring infrastructure (1,300 meters or shallower). While multiple wind facility scenarios across a broad area of the West Coast were simulated for this report, the same framework can be utilized in the future to focus on new lease areas and other probable project locations as those become better refined.

For more information, contact:

• Eli Wallach, Schatz Energy Research Center, schatzenergy@humboldt.edu
• Sharon Kramer, H. T. Harvey & Associates, skramer@harveyecology.com

Download the following reports from our publications archive:

• Final report: Seabirds in 3D: A Framework to Evaluate Collision Vulnerability with Future Offshore Wind Developments
• Interim Project Report 1: Estimating Collision Vulnerability of the Seabird Community Across a Segment of the California Current System 
• Interim project report 2: Assessing Tradeoffs between Seabird Density at Collision Risk Height and Wind Facility Performance

Funding:

This research was funded by the California Energy Commission’s EPIC program. Learn more about EPIC.

Our new report, California Floating Offshore Wind: Evaluating Workforce Analyses and Assessing Professional Labor Needs, offers new insights into the professional workforce that will be needed in order to deploy floating offshore wind (FOSW) in California. The report (a) evaluates existing workforce analyses and tools, (b) examines key factors influencing job projections, and (c) assesses professional labor needs across multiple industry activities, including project development, supply chain, operations and maintenance, port development, and transmission infrastructure. In the context of this report, “professional occupations” refer to roles that typically require a university degree, and “professionals” are individuals in the workforce who hold such degrees.

Existing analyses for the sector exhibit significant variability in job projections. For example, estimates for job creation by 2030 range from 2,375 to 8,280 jobs — with differences largely driven by assumptions regarding project scale and level of state participation in the supply chain. This report includes a sensitivity analysis of supply chain factors using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) model. Our findings underscore the significant impact of in-state supply chain participation on overall job creation and workforce composition.

Our analysis indicates that of the total jobs that could be created through the development of a 1.5 GW offshore wind project in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area, the manufacturing of components accounts for 60%; staging, assembly, and installation represent 10%; development and soft costs account for 11%; and less than 18% are in operations and maintenance. 

The report’s evaluation of professional occupations across the FOSW sector, found that  professional occupations make up an estimated 37-41% of FOSW industry jobs (depending on the level of in-state supply chain activities), 20% of port development jobs, and 15% of onshore electric transmission development. In the FOSW industry, roles are concentrated in engineering, life and physical science, and management for many of the major activities.

To assess workforce readiness, this report also examines how professional FOSW industry and port development occupations align with existing degree programs at Cal Poly Humboldt (CPH). Our review indicates that CPH currently offers programs that align with nearly all professional roles in the FOSW industry and port development, with particular strengths in engineering and environmental sciences. 

• Download California Floating Offshore Wind: Evaluating Workforce Analyses and Assessing Professional Labor Needs from our publications archive.
• For more information, contact: schatzenergy@humboldt.edu or 707-826-4345.

We recently released a new report that evaluates potential scenarios for electric grid transmission development to support floating offshore wind along the northern coast of California and the southern coast of Oregon. The scenarios include onshore and offshore (undersea) transmission systems, with interconnections ranging from 7.2 to 25.8 gigawatts of generation capacity. The study encompasses multiple possible wind farm sites between Coos Bay, Oregon and Cape Mendocino, California, including the two currently awarded lease areas located 20 miles off California’s Humboldt Bay, and two Draft Wind Energy Areas near Brookings and Coos Bay, Oregon.

Because the existing transmission infrastructure in these rural, coastal areas is very limited, major investments will be required to support offshore wind development. This report estimates that transmission infrastructure costs could range from $7.5 billion for a 7.2 gigawatt wind farm to as much as $41.3 billion for a 25.8 gigawatt buildout. For the 7.2 gigawatt scenario, annual system-wide benefits are estimated to be roughly $1.2 billion, when compared to a base case without offshore wind generation. These savings include both production cost savings and greenhouse gas emissions savings; the latter is valued at $72 per metric ton of avoided emissions, based on the EPA’s projected social cost of carbon.

The report examines combinations of onshore and offshore transmission solutions, utilizing both high-voltage alternating current (HVAC) and high-voltage direct current (HVDC). Estimates also include the costs to deliver wind power to nearby coastal communities. The analysis indicates that coastal communities near wind farms could be connected to the new transmission infrastructure, thereby increasing the reliability and available capacity of electricity in those areas, for only 0.4% to 2.4% of the overall cost of the transmission upgrades.

This study also includes a preliminary assessment of anticipated permitting challenges related to environmental impacts, land use conflicts, and undersea cable routing. The findings indicate significant variations in permitting difficulty, ranging from low to very high among the various possible routes.

Because the Pacific offshore wind buildout will take decades to accomplish, the report emphasizes that infrastructure investment decisions made in the early phases must be informed by expected long-term strategies—both to minimize cost and impact, and so that developments do not become stranded. Proactive, regional transmission planning is critical. Likewise, technologies installed today must be designed to adapt to future solutions.

We recommend next steps including taking a more detailed look at near-term transmission needs for the first phase of offshore wind development; a detailed analysis of transmission routes, land ownership, and rights-of-way; and an assessment of the potential to couple battery energy storage with offshore wind.

This study was funded by the California Energy Commission and the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation of the U.S. Department of Defense, and developed in close collaboration with the Oregon Department of Energy. Technical project partners included the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Quanta Technology, H. T. Harvey & Associates, Mott MacDonald, and Conaway Geomatics.

• Download our reports at schatzcenter.org/publications.
• Contact: schatzenergy@humboldt.edu or 707-826-4345.

Hot water and industrial heat are foundational energy services, but with water heaters tucked in a closet or garage, and factories behind fences, the energy consumption of these applications isn’t always apparent. This year, our team analyzed the energy use of hot water and industrial heat, and found that both systems are currently a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

In our latest report, we describe the potential for electric heat pumps to simultaneously reduce customer costs and emissions while helping to stabilize the electrical grid. One of the greatest challenges we face today is how to bring more renewable energy onto the grid while making it more reliable and adaptable to climate change. Heat pumps are especially well-suited for this need: with their hot water tanks acting like a thermal battery, they can provide a lot of flexibility during critical peak stress events like the ones that have led to rolling blackouts in the last few years.

This report provides policy recommendations to support the deployment of heat pumps on a national basis. Our recommendations include a wide range of ideas, including incentives, reforming ENERGY STAR ratings, using federal procurement, targeting low-income household needs, and thinking about heat pump deployment as a stimulus opportunity. Our analysis also suggests that developing low-carbon heating technology could create tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in order to meet demand in the United States and support deployment around the world.

I’m excited about this report because it clearly outlines the opportunity to decarbonize this major sector of our energy system, representing 10% of energy sector emissions in the United States.

In addition to finding that heat pumps are cost effective and carbon friendly, we worked hard to provide actionable advice to policymakers who could make a difference.

Peter Alstone

This work was funded by the Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy. Partnering with us on this report was energy policy expert Evan Mills. The Schatz Center’s team included Peter Alstone, Jerome Carman, and Alejandro Cervantes, and we are grateful for contributions and review from numerous collaborators.

• Download the report
• For more information, please contact: peter.alstone@humboldt.edu