Within the next five years, four floating wind turbines could be visible off the coast of Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), kick-starting a wave of renewable energy projects on the Central Coast.
“There is a lot going on in terms of offshore wind on the entire coast of California, especially here off Santa Barbara County,” said Jennifer Lucchesi, executive officer to the California State Lands Commission.
“If you have ever been driving out to Palm Springs, you have seen these wind turbines. They would look very much like the turbines you see out there, but much bigger,” added Mikael Jakobsson, director of the pilot offshore wind project, CADEMO.
As opposed to traditional wind turbines, these would be installed roughly three miles off the Santa Barbara County coastline in the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean.
“We are going to be particularly interested in and how both marine mammals interact with the cables that connect the floating wind turbines to the seafloor,” Lucchesi told KSBY. “We are also going to be interested in how the shorebirds interact with the turbines since they are so close to the coast.”
Back in 2021, the State Lands Commission accepted an application from CADEMO for their offshore wind energy pilot project. Lucchesi says her team will spend the coming year conducting an environmental impact review of the region.
Project director, Mikael Jakobsson, added that CADEMO could set the stage for the future of offshore wind in California.
“It is four turbines, very representative to the large turbines that will come later on in the big projects that were auctioned by [the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management] recently; so we will be about five years ahead of that, which gives us time to really search and study species, industrial opportunity, how we can create jobs,” he told KSBY.
It is anticipated that each of the turbines could produce between 12 to 15 megawatts of energy which would be used to provide reliable power to VSFB.
Meanwhile, as the State of California announced its ambitious goal of creating five gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, both Lucchesi and Jakobsson said CADEMO could set the path for meeting that objective.
“There is going to be a lot of activity happening over the next five, ten years to really stand up this industry in California,” Lucchesi said.
“Hopefully we are going to see these turbines in the water by 2027,” Jakobsson said optimistically.
Lucchesi says the Commission’s environmental impact review should be complete by the end of the year, adding that the process will consist of public hearings, site visits, tribal outreach and more.
Other parts of California that are in the early stages of offshore wind developments include the north coast of San Luis Obispo County near Morro Bay and off the Eureka coast in the Humboldt area.
CADEMO says the total cost of the project is still being worked out.
