Offshore Wind
The Biden Administration has set goals for the U.S. to reach 100% clean electricity by 2035, with 35 Gigawatts (GW) generated from offshore wind (OSW) by 2025. California has set a goal to create at least 5 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. Realizing California’s goals will require new zero-emission OSW- ports, shipping, electrification, and supporting infrastructure powered by 100% renewable energy, every day.
As we forge ahead with offshore wind development, ensuring economic benefit sharing, ownership and investments for Tribal nations and underrepresented communities, and strong environmental and workforce protections is critical to the success of an equitable, sustainable, and just OSW effort.
Well-positioned to support the critical transition to a clean and just economy, BWG along with its affiliate, Estolano Advisors, brings in decades of experience in successfully negotiating community benefits and workforce agreements and developing equitable workforce policies, along with more than 20 years of experience in renewable energy and transmission planning and policy, understanding of natural resource issues and California’s policy landscape.
Our Approach
Guided by our vision of building an OSW economy that uplifts communities, we support equitable OSW development by working to:
Center communities of color and people with career-limiting circumstances in the decision-making process through mechanisms such as community steering committees;
Establish concrete guardrails for OSW development that reduce impacts on California’s unique marine ecosystems, including adaptive management plans;
Design training programs and workforce standards to cultivate a skilled local workforce who would build, monitor, and maintain the OSW systems, including natural resources management;
Achieve community-centered benefit-sharing models and investments in local community infrastructure and services, including strong community-benefits agreements with local decision-making and control;
Create replicable models for the region and local communities to secure reliable, clean, and safe energy and infrastructure benefits and avoid disproportionately bearing the impacts of the OSW and future development processes;
Ensure federal and state regulatory and legislative processes include protections and investments in natural resources, Tribal nations, and local communities.
Our Work
Better World Group (BWG) serves as a policy and strategic advisor to the Humboldt Area Foundation’s Redwood Region Climate And Community Resilience Hub (the “CORE Hub”). Recognizing this region’s history of boom-and-bust cycles caused by extractive industries and its legacy of underinvestment, BWG worked closely with a network of Tribal Nations, local government agencies and educational institutions, labor leaders, local community-based organizations, and community residents to develop comments on the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management’s (BOEM) offshore leasing process to propose a community-centered investments and decision-making package to benefit Tribal Nations, fisheries, local communities, and the environment. This led BOEM to create a first-of-its-kind credit for developers entering into general community benefits agreements.
BWG continues to provide strategic guidance and support on designing and negotiating equitable community benefits frameworks for offshore wind projects, their supporting offshore wind terminal, and related infrastructure on the North Coast.