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Building Worker and Community-focused Economic Transitions in Coal Country

Maine lawmakers approve bill to jumpstart floating offshore wind, develop 3 GW by 2040

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.

Port of Entry: Harbor District begins environmental review for project to turn Humboldt Bay into a wind farm manufacturing hub

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.)

Maine Unions Near Compromise With Governor on Offshore Wind

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.

The New (Renewable) Energy Tyranny

By Al Weinrub - Non Profit Quarterly, July 13, 2023

There are two very different (and antagonistic) renewable energy models: the utility-centered, centralized energy model—the existing dominant one—and the community-centered, decentralized energy model—what energy justice advocates have been pushing for. Although both models utilize the same technologies (solar generation, energy storage, and so on), they have very different physical characteristics (remote versus local energy resources, transmission lines or not). But the key difference is that they represent very different socioeconomic energy development models and very different impacts on our communities and living ecosystems.

Let me start by recounting some recent history in California—the state often regarded as a leader in the clean energy transition.

In recent years, California’s energy system has failed the state’s communities in almost too many ways to count: utility-caused wildfires, utility power shutoffs, and skyrocketing utility bills, for starters. Currently, state energy institutions are advancing an all-out effort to suppress local community ownership and control of energy resources—the decentralized energy model.

Instead, they are promoting and enforcing an outmoded, top-down, utility-centered, extractive, and unjust energy regime—the centralized energy model—which effectively eliminates local energy decision-making and local energy resource development. This model forces communities to pay the enormous costs of unneeded transmission line construction and bear the massive burden of transmission line failures.

Using the power of the state to enforce the centralized energy model is at the heart of California’s new renewable energy tyranny. And this tyranny has now spread to the federal level, as substantial public investment is now set to go toward large-scale renewable energy projects across the country. These projects will be controlled by and benefit an increasingly powerful renewable energy oligarchy. Being touted as a solution to what is popularly regarded as the “climate emergency,” this centralized energy model has actually failed to meet our communities’ energy needs, and at the same time has exacerbated systemic energy injustice.

AB 525 Port Readiness Plan

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).

Why Maine’s climate-conscious governor vetoed an offshore wind bill

By Naveena Sadasivam - Grist, June 29, 2023

Ever since Democrat Janet Mills was elected governor of Maine in 2018, she has been a strong advocate for renewable energy in general and wind energy in particular. The state has tremendous potential for wind production, given the high wind velocities off its coast, and it has committed to procuring 100 percent of its energy from clean sources by 2050. Earlier this year, in an attempt to supercharge wind energy production in the state, Mills proposed legislation to speed up permitting for wind ports, sites where wind turbines could be built before being deployed offshore.

That bill got the votes needed to pass in the state legislature — only to be vetoed by Mills herself earlier this week. At issue are amendments to the bill made in the state senate, which require the undertaking to incorporate Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, a type of collective bargaining agreement in the construction industry that streamlines work on projects and establishes standards for wages and working conditions — standards that are typically more robust than those that would prevail in their absence. 

In a letter vetoing the bill, the governor said the provision would have a “chilling effect” on companies that are non-unionized, raise construction costs for the wind port which would eventually be borne by Maine taxpayers, and lead to out-of-state workers being bussed to Maine. The idea is that the PLAs will lead to fewer firms pursuing contracts for work on the wind project — or firms will increase costs to meet the PLA requirements — leading to a higher overall price tag and less employment for local residents. (Only 10 percent of construction workers in Maine are in a union.)

New Report Takes a Critical Look at Critical Minerals

By Nikki Skuce - Northern Confluence, June 29, 2023

A new report “Critical Minerals: A Critical Look” seeks to expand the conversation around “critical minerals,” to ensure reducing consumption and incorporating other alternatives into an energy transition – like recycling and re-mining – are taken into consideration. 

While the federal government has already launched its Critical Minerals strategy, the Province of British Colombia has put forward $6 million in its budget toward developing one.

As B.C. moves forward with its “critical minerals” strategy, it needs to look beyond mining and toward other opportunities. What policies and programs are needed to support re-mining, recycling and urban mining? Can re-mining help to reclaim or close some of the abandoned and orphaned legacy mine sites littered throughout the province? How can B.C.’s strategy look at reducing consumption and link to its circular economy strategy? What investments does B.C. need to keep making in transportation alternatives, such as the recently announced e-bike rebate and investments in active transportation? How can B.C. work with the federal government on ensuring batteries and other technologies are designed with dismantling and recycling in mind? 

And for new mines that may open, how are Indigenous rights being respected and free, prior and informed consent achieved in the pursuit of mining critical minerals? What steps are being taken to improve B.C.’s reg­ulatory regime to ensure more responsible mining that minimizes environmental harms and risks?

We can’t just mine our way out of the climate crisis. As “critical minerals” gets lodged into our collective psyche, we need to ensure that policymakers do not just focus on the need for more mines. We hope that this report provides some facts and background information, and stimulates a broader conversation about what is needed for the energy transition.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

Unions Furious After Democratic Maine Gov. Vetoes Offshore Wind Bill Over Fair Labor Rules

By Kenny Stancil - Common Dreams, June 28, 2023

Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Monday vetoed an offshore wind development bill because she opposed an amendment requiring collective bargaining agreements for future projects, drawing condemnation from the state's largest federation of unions.

"Maine's climate motto has been 'Maine Won't Wait.' With this veto, Gov. Mills is saying, 'Maine Will Wait'—for thousands of good jobs, for clean energy, and for the build-out of a new industry," Maine AFL-CIO executive director Matt Schlobohm said in a statement. "We will wait because the governor is opposed to fair labor standards which are the industry norm."

"The governor's ideological opposition to strong labor standards," said Schlobohm, "jeopardizes the build-out of this industry and all the climate, economic, and community benefits that come with it."

Mills supported an earlier version of Legislative Document (L.D.) 1847 that originated from her office. Last week, however, the governor made clear that she opposed the addition of an amendment requiring project labor agreements (PLAs)—pre-hire deals negotiated between unions and employers that establish wage floors and other conditions—for the construction of offshore wind ports as well as the manufacturing of turbines and other components needed for wind energy projects.

In a letter to state lawmakers, "Mills argued that mandating a PLA would create a 'chilling effect' for non-union companies, discouraging them from bidding on construction," The American Prospect's Lee Harris reported. "Supporters of the PLA provision say that is a far-fetched objection, since the agreements do not ban non-union contractors from vying for jobs. (In fact, that's one reason some more radical unionists say PLAs do too little to advance labor's cause.)"

The governor vowed to veto the bill unless the Legislature recalled it from her desk and revised it to the initial version or adopted "language that would ensure that union workers, employee-owned businesses, and small businesses could all benefit."

Wind turbine ports run by union labor could help Maine be leader in climate, industry

By Dan Neumann - Maine Beacon, June 19, 2023

A bill introduced by Gov. Janet Mills that would create visual impact standards for future offshore wind projects has passed the Maine Legislature and is on its way to her desk. 

Advocates are describing the amended version of the bill as “groundbreaking,” as it now includes requirements that any port facilities that are built to support offshore wind energy in Maine include strong labor, community benefit and environmental standards.

Proponents say the changes would put Maine in a strong position to attract federal funding for future ports as President Joe Biden signed an executive order last year prioritizing federal funding for large-scale builds that include project labor agreements (PLAs). PLAs ensure construction is done by union workers making a prevailing wage determined to be livable. 

However, it remains to be seen if Mills will support the final legislation. A conservative Democrat who has sided with business interests over workers on several proposals since taking office in 2019, Mills has so far been non-committal about her position on the proposed labor standards.

“A broad coalition of working people and environmental advocates have come together to support the creation of a new industry in Maine that can help us combat climate change, create good jobs and support coastal communities,” Francis Eanes, director of the Maine Labor Climate Council, said in a statement last week. “We are grateful for the strong support we’ve seen in the Legislature, and we are hopeful that Gov. Mills will support this groundbreaking step forward on one of her most high-profile priorities.”

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