Source: CBS News

Excerpt:

The Port of Long Beach on Tuesday unveiled its plans for a massive floating offshore facility to manufacture wind turbines in an effort to help California reach zero emission in the future. 

The facility, which would be known as Pier Wind, would include 400 acres of newly built land just southwest of the Long Beach International Gateway Bridge, and would be able to support the construction of turbines standing more than 1,000 feet tall, or as tall as the Eiffel Tower. 

Once finished, the turbines would then be free to ship up and down the coast of California in order to help the state reach its renewable energy targets, specifically in producing 25 gigawatts of offshore wind power, in coming decades. 

“Imagine fully assembled wind turbines capable of generating 20 megawatts of energy towed by sea from the Port of Long Beach to offshore wind farms in Central and Northern California,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero. “As society transitions to clean energy, our harbor is ideally located for such an enterprise — with calm seas behind a federal breakwater, one of the deepest and widest channels in the U.S., direct access to open ocean and no air height restrictions. No other location has the space to achieve the economies of scale needed to drive down the cost of energy for these huge turbines.”

The project, which officials currently estimate to cost around $4.7 billion, calls for construction on the facility to being as soon as Jan. 2027, with the first 100 acres of operational property open in 2031. The next 100 acres would be available later that same year with the final 200 acres coming by 2035.

Read more: Port of Long Beach unveils plans to build massive offshore wind turbine facility