Gov. Jerry Brown met earlier this month with executives from one of the world’s biggest energy companies to discuss the possibilities of developing the first offshore wind project in California.

While on his way to the recent world climate conference in Germany, Brown huddled with Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, senior vice president for corporate sustainability for Statoil in Norway, according to the news website Axios.

While offshore wind farms are becoming a common sight in Europe, none have been built on the West Coast and only one has been completed in the U.S. — off the shores of Block Island in Rhode Island.

“It’s great, all that wind blowing, if we can get it, if the price is right, if the technology is there, if we can get through appropriate analysis,” Brown told Axios last week in Bonn, Germany. “I think it may have real potential, but there’s lots of issues there.”


Because the continental shelf plunges steeply off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, it’s impractical to bolt turbines into the seabed. As a result, constructing floating wind turbines is considered necessary.

Earlier this year, Statoil opened the first floating wind farm in the world, off the coast of Scotland and estimated to power about 20,000 homes.

Based in Oslo, Statoil is 67 percent owned by the Norwegian government and has been aggressively moving into wind power generation. Last year, the company applied to the U.S. government for a lease of nearly 56 square miles at Morro Bay.

But Statoil is not the only competitor for the Morro Bay lease.


Seattle-based Trident Winds has hopes to build a floating array of about 100 wind turbines some 33 miles from the shore by 2025.

Wind energy analysts believe offshore facilities have huge potential.

It’s estimated that nearly a terrawatt of electricity will be generated off the coast of California, 13 times more capacity than all the land-based wind farms across the country generate.

In May 2016, Brown called on the U.S. Department of the Interior to establish a state task force in coordination with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to identify promising areas for wind energy off California’s coastline.


Business


rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1251 Twitter: @robnikolewski

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