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Yurok Tribal members (bottom right) fought to remove dams from the Klamath River, once an abundant source of salmon. Officers (bottom left) are shown cutting down marijuana plants in a July 2015 raid.|Inga Spence/Alamy Stock Photo; Terray Sylvester/VWPics /Alamy Stock Photo; PA Images Alamy Stock Photo The Newsom administration’s path to zeroing out the state’s carbon emissions by 2045 runs right through the bay. It’s the only developed port from San Francisco to Coos Bay, Oregon, able to accommodate assembly of the massive turbines. The area could ultimately supply the turbines for both California — which would need around 1,700 to reach its goal — and the rest of the West Coast. Additional leases are expected in Washington, Oregon and offshore from the Northern California counties of Mendocino and Del Norte. President Joe Biden wants the nation to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Offshore wind is central to both administrations’ plans due to its ability to displace the burning of fossil fuels, particularly in the evening when solar power drops off. Reaching those goals will require the state and nation to advance offshore wind and accompanying transmission projects at speeds that governments haven’t achieved in generations. “All of it has to work together in what is a really complex and almost overwhelming set of challenges,” said Huffman. The Harbor District is partnering with Crowley Wind Services, a division of the international logistics company, to develop a 180-acre terminal on property occupied by a former pulp mill. The land — which now hosts two seaweed farms, an oyster hatchery and temporary storage for freshly caught hagfish — would be transformed into an industrial terminal with up to 650,000 square feet of building space, lights mounted 150 feet in the air and giant cranes that crawl through the water on tank treads. The district is in early permitting stages under the California Environmental Quality Act, which can be a lengthy process even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature recently took steps to limit the duration of legal challenges filed under the law. 
Gov. Gavin Newsom is planning on offshore wind powering roughly 25 million homes by 2045.|Bruce Gilbert/AP Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies At the same time, the project developers are initiating a federal permitting process that’s expected to take six years. They’re assessing impacts to the economy, tribes and lands. The projects would affect fishermen the most, impacting the Dover sole, thornyhead, and sablefish fisheries offshore and harvests of Dungeness crab, baitfish and shellfish within the bay. The extent of the threat, along with the effects on birds and whales, is still being assessed. The companies are addressing technical challenges of operating the floating turbines and transmitting energy to shore from floating platforms connected by cable to the ocean floor 2,500 feet below. While fixed-bottom turbines are common in Europe and are arriving on the East Coast, the floating variety have never been used in such deep water.
Transmission projects of the scale needed to carry 25 gigawatts of wind energy 270 miles from Humboldt to San Francisco have in the past taken more than a decade, and an overland line would need to run through environmentally sensitive areas as well as populated communities that may not welcome them. An undersea cable is being considered, but deep underwater canyons and other features make that option logistically daunting.
On land, leaders such as Yurok Tribal Court Judge Abby Abinanti worry how the expected influx of construction and manufacturing labor, some likely to occupy temporary “mancamps,” will affect vulnerable people such as native women who already go missing and are killed at higher rates than other groups.
“Our concern is that these camps end up elevating those kinds of statistics unless preventative efforts are made,” said Abinanti.
She also wants to make sure women have the same access as men to the new jobs through training.
And then there’s the cost. The price tag to develop 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045 is about $100 billion — not including some major outlays such as transmission upgrades, according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimate.
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