Following more than three years of planning and analysis, California has established an offshore wind goal of 7,600 MW, with procurements starting as early as 2027. Through its central procurement efforts, California intends to bring about a “market transformation” to help reduce the costs of particular technologies, like offshore wind, allowing them to be developed at scale with competitive pricing.
California’s Offshore Wind Policy
Assembly Bill 1373 (AB 1373), enacted in 2023, authorizes the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to order the procurement of resources by electrical corporations, electric service providers, and community choice aggregators as part of its Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process. The same bill also allows the CPUC to identify the need to procure long lead-time resources through a central planning process in which the CPUC may request that the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) procure long lead-time resources on behalf of entities included in the CPUC’s IRP. AB 1373 requires the CPUC to make an initial “need determination” before procurements can commence through the centralized procurement mechanism.
