Trump kills another CA offshore wind farm, favoring dirty energy over clean | Opinion

Donald Trump’s war on clean energy has once again reduced the number of wind farms planned off the coast of Morro Bay — from three down to one.

That’s good news for Central Coast residents who believe offshore wind will inevitably lead to over-industrialization, destroying the character and natural beauty of Morro Bay and other nearby coastal communities.

But let’s call that what it is: incredibly short-sighted.

Rejecting sensible growth in a small coastal hamlet for the wrong reasons — be it Morro Bay or some other community — could impede progress as we attempt to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

Besides, no decisions have been made about the location of onshore support facilities.

The Port of Long Beach and Humboldt have been suggested as likely locations for assembling the huge turbines, and a report released last year concluded Port San Luis — not Morro Bay — would be suitable for an operations-and-maintenance port that would include a dock for service vessels, warehouses and office space.

Just 3 offshore wind leases remain in California

In the latest deal announced on Wednesday, the administration is paying Invenergy $765 million to abandon four leases — the one off Morro Bay, one in the New York Bight (the area between Long Island and the New Jersey coast) and two off the Gulf of Maine.

That follows a similar deal struck in April, when Golden State Wind and Bluepoint Wind walked away with $885 million to end leases off the coasts of Morro Bay, New Jersey and New York.

California is now left with only three offshore leases: one off Morro Bay and two off Humboldt Bay. Who knows if those won’t be the next to go.

It is possible that a future president will once again have the maturity to look beyond the present and plan for our climate future.

But for now, the tunnel-visioned Trump administration is bribing energy companies to walk away from offshore wind projects, which he detests, if they agree to invest in other developments — mostly the fossil-fuel energy projects the president favors.

Billions spent to cancel offshore wind leases nationwide

According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration has now spent a total of $2.6 billion to cancel offshore wind leases across the U.S.

That’s a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars, but far worse, it’s a betrayal of current and future generations that will continue to be harmed by our reliance on fossils fuels.

While it’s become fashionable to play down the “doomsday consequences” of climate change — thank you, Bill Gates — that doesn’t mean we can ignore what’s already happening.

Climate change is real, and we already are seeing the results in the form of more extreme weather events, heightened wildfire risk, shrinking snowpacks and rising sea levels that contribute to flooding and coastal erosion.

There are indirect consequences for all of us: California’s insurance market has been affected by the development of new catastrophe modeling and ratemaking regulations that factor in climate change.

“With climate-driven mega-fires burning across the state, it is clear that relying on decades-old regulations only hurts our ability to prepare for the future,” Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said in a 2024 statement.

Cancellations make it harder to go carbon-free

Offshore wind energy alone will not save us from disaster, but it is a source California is counting on to get us to a carbon-free grid by 2045.

Without it, the state will have to rely more heavily on solar, geothermal, long-duration storage and possibly nuclear.

While is won’t be impossible to meet the goal, it will be more challenging, especially since the Trump administration is also making it more difficult to develop onshore wind, solar and battery storage projects while encouraging more production of oil, natural gas and even coal.

We should point out that here was never any guarantee these offshore leases would have been developed at full scale — especially since they were intended for floating wind turbines, which have yet to be widely deployed.

But even exploring the possibility would have provided valuable information for the future. That’s a huge blow not just to California, but also to the entire world.

It’s hard to see that as cause for celebration.

Because we will only get to a clean future if we leave dirty energy behind.