offshore wind

By staff - UNITE, November 2023

For further background, visit this site.

We are at the crossroads. There are two paths on offer, and it’s time to choose. On the one hand, there is a path of cuts: further decimating our steel industry and the town. On the other, a path of growth: an immediate gateway to rebuilding the industry.

The current plan from Tata is a hammer blow. It would severely shrink the plant: cutting production capacity by another 40%, with thousands of job losses. Another well-meaning proposal from the consultants Syndex also involves cutting capacity. It would also mean thousands of job losses: some immediately, and some in the longer term.

Why can’t we have another option? A path that would deliver profitability in the long term, and safeguard every job now. That’s the Unite plan. The cuts path wouldn’t just cost thousands of jobs on the site. It would also have massive knock-on effects on contractors, downstream sites, and the town and local economy of Port Talbot.

Our industry has suffered decades of decline. We don’t forget the impacts of the mine closures, or of the steel works at Ebbw Vale. We must not let Port Talbot be next. It is time to stop this vicious cycle.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Paul Atkin - Greener Jobs Alliance, September 21, 2023

In agreeing to be interviewed by the Spectator under the title the folly of Net Zero GMB General Secretary Gary Smith lets his members down; not least because remarks like these from a leading trade unionist help give Rishi Sunak encouragement to accelerate his retreat from the government’s already inadequate climate targets.

The phrase “the folly of Net Zero” makes as much sense as “the folly of getting into the lifeboats when the ship is sinking”. 

Difficulties in making a transition to sustainability does not mean that making it isn’t essential, and the faster we move the less damage is done. We can see that damage all around us even now. 

Gary doesn’t seem to get this, any more than Rishi Sunak does, and he latches on to some of the same lines as the PM does, albeit with a more pungent turn of phrase. To go through these point by point, quotes are either directly from Gary Smith or the Spectator.

By Staff - ILWU, August 11, 2023

On August 10, the Humboldt Bay Harbor District approved a project labor agreement (PLA) for the construction of an offshore wind terminal at the Port of Humboldt Bay that also secures the ILWU’s traditional, historic, and geographic jurisdiction at the Port.

More than 40 ILWU members from ILWU Locals 14, 18, 34, 54, and the Inlandboatmen’s Union (IBU) came to the meeting and spoke in favor of the agreement. Longshore work is not a part of the PLA, which only covers the construction of the terminal, however, the ILWU and the California State Building Trades Council negotiated an amendment in the agreement that ensures that loading and unloading of cargo “shall remain the sole jurisdiction of the ILWU.”

The ILWU Executive Board’s Offshore Wind Subcommittee, chaired by Local 34 President Sean Farley, has been working with the ILWU Organizing Department and Washington, D.C. Legislative Department for more than two years. They have been meeting with officials at the federal, state, and local levels, offshore wind developers, and the California State Building Trades Council to protect ILWU jurisdiction and to make it clear that ILWU members will be loading and offloading all cargo and that the members of the IBU will also be performing their traditional work on these projects.

Members of Local 14 in Eureka have been meeting with Humboldt Bay Harbor District Commissioners for more than a year and attending Harbor District meetings monthly to learn about this new industry, build relationships, and protect the ILWU’s jurisdiction.

Construction on the terminal is not expected to start until 2025 and could take up to three years to complete. The offloading of any cargo could be at least 7 years away but it is essential to be involved in the process early to protect longshore work and the work of IBU mariners.

“The Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind project will be the first, but not the last offshore wind project on the West Coast,” said ILWU International Vice President Bobby Olvera, Jr. “Securing our jurisdiction on this first project sets an important precedent as we continue to fight to protect our work on future offshore wind projects.”

Text and images by Isabella Vanderheiden - Lost Coast Outpost, August 11, 2023

Local contractors and labor union members packed Eureka’s Wharfinger Building Thursday night to give the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District Board of Commissioners their two cents on a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for the Humboldt Offshore Wind Terminal Project that could guarantee local jobs for years to come.

The PLA outlines the general terms and conditions for labor employment affiliated with the first stages of port development on Humboldt Bay. The agreement has sparked opposition from some local construction companies that run non-union shops as it will require non-union workers to pay toward the union trust fund.

The Harbor District has spent the last year working with members of the Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council, the State Building and Construction Trade Council of the State of California, and other local labor representatives to develop the agreement, which is required by federal law. The contractors and subcontractors who are awarded contracts to work on the heavy lift marine terminal will be subject to the provisions of the agreement, including no-strike, no-lock-out clauses to eliminate delays associated with labor unrest. 

“This is an agreement between the district and the labor unions that we’re going to have a smooth labor transition and that there’s going to be no disruption to the workforce,” said Larry Oetker, executive director of the Harbor District. “But in return, there are some hiring stipulations that are included in [the document].”

The agreement details hiring priorities for “disadvantaged workers,” or local residents who, prior to the project, experienced barriers to employment, as noted in section 2.9.

By Jeff Hunerlach and Tom Wheeler - Lost Coast Outpost, August 9, 2023

The following is an op-ed written by Jeff Hunerlach of the Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council and Tom Wheeler of the Environmental Protection Information Center.

By Diana DiGangi - Utility Dive, July 27, 2023

Dive Brief:

• The Maine legislature on Tuesday passed a bill requiring the state to procure 3 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040, and establishing provisions regarding the construction and siting of future projects.
• LD 1895 supports the creation of a port facility designed for fabricating and launching the materials needed to establish floating offshore wind farms, as the waters in the Gulf of Maine are too deep to accommodate fixed-bottom wind turbines.
• The bill received broad-based support from state labor and environmental groups, as well as some fishing industry groups, who supported the bill’s provision to give priority to projects sited outside of a key fishing area known as Lobster Management Area 1, or LMA-1.

By Elaine Weinreb - North Coast Journal, July 27, 2023

This graphic shows various types of offshore wind farms. The deep-water variety on the left will be what's used off Humboldt County's shoreline, where the waters reach approximately 2,500 feet deep. Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Big changes are afoot on the Samoa Peninsula. The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District is planning to construct a large manufacturing center to craft and assemble giant wind turbines suitable for the deep offshore waters of the Pacific Coast.

Officially known as the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Multipurpose Marine Terminal Project, the port development is a crucial step to bring plans to build a first-of-its kind wind farm off the Pacific Coast to fruition. It would also position Humboldt's as the only port on the West Coast built to manufacture and repair the turbines — a potential economic boon for the area as the industry enters a period of unprecedented growth.

In an effort to address the climate crisis, the Biden administration issued an executive order about a year ago requiring 30 gigawatts of energy to be produced by offshore winds by 2030. That's enough to power approximately 15 million homes, or just about all the housing units in California.

"The government has said, 'Within the next seven years, we're going to deploy 60 coal-fired power plants' worth of wind,'" Harbor District Development Director Rob Holmlund said at a recent public meeting initiating the environmental review process for the port project. "That is a really ambitious goal ... it's nearly double what the world currently has."

To achieve this, the federal government has leased out numerous areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in locations where the wind is the strongest.

While wind turbines are already common off the Atlantic Coast, where the ocean water is relatively shallow, the Pacific Coast poses unique challenges. Because the continental shelf drops steeply off only a few miles from the shoreline, wind farms off the Pacific Coast require a different design. While the East Coast's shallow waters allow for turbines to be built directly up from the sea floor, wind farms on the Pacific Ocean must float atop the water on barges tethered to the ocean's floor. It's a relatively new technology only being used at a handful of wind farms in the world on a small scale, and even those are different from what's being proposed off Humboldt's shore. (For example, the world's deepest offshore wind farm is currently in Norway at a depth of 721 feet, according to CalMatters, while Humboldt's farm would be located in waters approximately 2,500 feet deep.)

Pacific Coast wind turbines must be incredibly large. The platforms that will support the turbines alone are each the size of the Arcata Plaza, comprised of three separate pontoons. Atop each platform will stand a 500-foot tower, the top of which will be attached to three 500-foot rotating blades. The entire length of the completed turbine extends about 1,100 feet straight up from the surface of the water. (For reference, the smokestack at the old pulp mill on the Samoa Peninsula stands about 300 feet tall.)

By Lee Harris - The Prospect, July 14, 2023

Last month, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoed a bill requiring a project labor agreement (PLA) for Maine offshore wind ports, arguing that the prehire deal would restrict the labor pool narrowly to union construction workers.

After the legislative session dragged on for another month, the building trades are now approaching a compromise on a reworked bill with Mills, a prominent champion of states’ climate action. The bill, which was advanced late Wednesday night by the state legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, is expected to move to Mills’s desk next week.

Instead of a PLA, it spells out a Community and Workforce Enhancement Agreement (CWEA), a list of labor standards for offshore wind development, including apprenticeship requirements and a ban on the use of independent contractors and temp staffing agencies. Most critically, it would require that all work happen at collectively bargained rates.

In other words, even non-union contractors on Maine’s offshore wind projects would be required to pay the statewide wage rates that unions agree upon with their contractors during collective bargaining.

“We want to be sure this industry is competing over things like technological innovation, as opposed to who can bargain down with workers,” Francis Eanes, director of the Maine Labor Climate Council, a coalition of state unions, told the Prospect.

The new bill combines two earlier pieces of legislation: the vetoed bill on ports, and a second bill on offshore wind energy procurement, which the governor had also threatened to veto due to its use of a PLA.

By Brooklyn Fox and Sarah Lehman - California State Lands Commission, July 7, 2023

Assembly Bill (AB) 525 (Chiu, Chapter 231, Statutes of 2021) was signed by the Governor in 2021 and requires the Californica Energy Commission (CEC), in coordination with the California Coastal Commission, Ocean Protection Council, State Lands Commission (CSLC), Office of Planning and Research, Department of Fish and Wildlife, Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, Independent System Operator, and Public Utilities Commission (and other relevant federal, state, and local agencies as needed) to develop a strategic plan (AB 525 Strategic Plan) for offshore wind development in federal waters by June 30, 2023.

On August 1, 2022, the CEC established a planning goal of 2 to 5 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045 (Flint 2022). To meet these goals, the AB 525 Strategic Plan shall include, at a minimum, the following five chapters:

1. Identification of sea space, including the findings and recommendations resulting from activities undertaken pursuant to Section 25991.2 of AB 525.
2. Waterfront facilities improvements plan, including facilities that could support construction and staging of foundations, manufacturing of components, final assembly, and long-term operations and maintenance, pursuant to Section 25991.3 of AB 525. Economic and workforce development and identification of port space and infrastructure, including the plan developed pursuant to Section 25991.3 of AB 525.
3. Transmission planning, including the findings resulting from activities undertaken pursuant to Section 25991.4 of AB 525.
4. Permitting, including the findings resulting from activities undertaken pursuant to Section 25991.5 of AB 525.
5. Potential impacts on coastal resources, fisheries, Native American and Indigenous peoples, and national defense, and strategies for addressing those potential impacts.

Per Section 25991.3 of AB 525, based on the sea spaces identified pursuant to Section 25991.2 of AB 525, the CEC, in coordination with relevant state and local agencies, must develop a plan to improve waterfront facilities that could support a range of floating offshore wind energy development activities, including construction and staging of foundations, manufacturing of components, final assembly, and long-term operations and maintenance facilities. The purpose of this AB 525 Port Readiness Plan is to perform a detailed assessment of the necessary investments in California ports to support offshore wind energy activities, including construction, assembly, and operations and maintenance. This report will inform the AB 525 Strategic Plan.

For more details, see: AB 525 Reports: Offshore Renewable Energy

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Robert Collier, et. al - IBEW Local 1245, et. al., July 5, 2023

California’s offshore wind industry can fill its workforce training needs largely through negotiating labor contracts with unions, thus providing access to the state’s well-honed apprenticeship system. But some workforce gaps exist in the offshore marine services, caused mainly by legal and regulatory hurdles. These are some of the key findings of a new, state-funded report issued by an alliance of industry, labor and academia. Unlike many other desktop research reports issued in recent years about California offshore wind, this report was based on empirical, hands-on planning for California’s first offshore wind project: CADEMO in northern Santa Barbara County.

The new report was produced by the Offshore Wind High Road Training Partnership (HRTP), funded by the California Workforce Development Board. The HRTP members include: Floventis, CADEMO’s owner and developer; the State Building and Construction Trades Council; electrical union IBEW 1245; San Luis Obispo County Office of Education; SLO Partners; and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

CADEMO is a demonstration project comprising four full-size, 15-MW floating turbines in state waters off the coast of Vandenberg Space Force Base. It is expected to be operational in late 2027, years before the first larger-scale projects planned in federal waters.