A 9.5-megawatt floating wind turbine deployed at the Kincardine Offshore Wind project, located off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland. Photo: Principle Power.


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A few of the folks representing Vineyard Offshore stopped by the Outpost office this week to talk about offshore wind development on the North Coast and what that means for the people of Humboldt County. 

Vineyard Offshore is a North America-based developer for Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, one of the energy companies that was awarded a lease to develop floating offshore wind energy facilities on the West Coast during a lease auction hosted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) last December. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and RWE Offshore Wind Holdings, LLC placed the winning bids for two lease areas in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA), which spans more than 132,000 acres approximately 20 miles west of Eureka.

The Vineyard Offshore team is currently working on Vineyard Wind 1, the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind energy project, located about 35 miles off the coast of mainland Massachusettes. 

In our interview, Jennifer Cullen, the company’s director of Labor Relations and Workforce Development, talks about the job creation aspect of the project and her hopes to employ local folks in long-term positions at the future wind farm. Erik Peckar, who recently took on the title of West Coast Director of External Affairs, tells us about his experience in working with coastal communities on developing strong Community Benefits Agreements. Andrew Doba, the director of communications, chimes in here and there.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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LoCO: What brings you to Humboldt County this week?

Jennifer Cullen: Well, we just left a conference with LIUNA, the Laborers’ International Union of North America. They convened a group of 60 or 70 people, including contractors and community partners, as well as the two developers that both have lease areas off the Humboldt County coast – Vineyard Offshore and RWE [Offshore Wind] – to talk with the community about workforce development and, specifically, engagement with the labor unions. I spoke about our workforce development and our project labor agreement for our project on the East Coast. … 

We know the communities where we’re from and we’re here to get to know Humboldt better. There are a lot of stakeholders here that are very engaged and really interested in [offshore wind] but there’s still a question surrounding, you know, “What does this mean for us? How does this work? Who are you guys? What are you doing?” We’re just doing our best to try to get to know all of the various community partners we’re going to be working with.

Erik Peckar: Well, this is my third day on the job as the West Coast Director of External Affairs [for Vineyard Offshore]. I actually came out to California five or six weeks ago to talk to some folks about the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) and my experience in working with Vineyard Power, which is a non-profit on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. … Humboldt is really at the beginning level. This is a big opportunity for me to really take a lot of the lessons learned with Vineyard Power and translate a lot of those skills in the development space to what’s kind of going on here. 

I’ve been involved in the community organization space on Martha’s Vineyard since 2010. I think a big part of this is bringing the community along, and understanding that the community has some ownership of the project and has a voice in the project. We want to foster a true partnership with these CBAs between developers and communities to make sure everyone is walking hand in hand. There are a lot of things that the community will want from these projects and you can’t attain those goals without the project actually succeeding. It’s kind of a two-way street in terms of getting things done. So, we’re doing a lot of listening, a lot of learning, a lot of just meeting folks and really trying to understand the needs of the community.

LoCO: I have had a hard time trying to understand exactly what the process is for the CBA money. I understand that this money was pledged upon the purchase of the leases but how is the pledge fulfilled and what are the mechanics for that? This is something the community is very interested in and it’s kind of the tip of the iceberg for what we are hoping this sort of new industry will bring into the community, but I think people are confused – I’m certainly confused – about how the whole process works.

Peckar: The process here in California is a little bit different from my experience in Massachusetts in terms of the timing of things. In Massachusetts, we had [our CBA] prior to the lease auction. Rewind back to 2015 or 2016. We, as a community, got [BOEM] to recognize CBAs as a discount factor in the auctions. So they would give a certain percentage credit to a developer that had CBA with a community benefit organization. Vineyard Power essentially got the support of all of the six towns on Martha’s Vineyard to come together and we were kind of, you know, dubbed the community benefit organization to be able to negotiate with a developer on behalf of the community.

LoCO: So, Vineyard Power was the community benefit organization?

Peckar: Correct. And the main tenants of what we wanted for the community was, initially, we wanted some sort of option to potentially purchase the electricity. We were looking at jobs – operations and maintenance jobs specifically. The project committed to having an operations and maintenance facility on the [island] because, once construction is completed after two or three years, you then move on to the operation phase and the construction jobs phase out. So, there are jobs that the project developers committed to being on Martha’s Vineyard for the lifetime of the project. 

Another thing is all of the six towns on Martha’s Vineyard came together to commit to being 100 percent renewable and convert our transportation electricity by 2040. … Where do we get their electricity from? We get it from offshore wind. That was kind of the magic space that we as a community wanted to get to and the project developers committed a certain portion of the funding to help us reach those goals. … They understood that partnering with a community benefit organization and having the community on your side would increase the likelihood that the project was going to succeed. That has played through to fruition with construction going on right now and with the project being awarded the first power purchase agreement in Massachusetts.

Andrew Doba: And you’ve got to remember, this is all in the shadow of Cape Wind, which was a project that was going to be closer to shore in Nantucket Sound and was basically debated for 16 or 17 years before it was finally shut down. There were a lot of lessons learned from that failed process. We wanted to make sure the next project was built from the ground up rather than saying, “Top-down, this is what we’re trying to do.”

Cullen: My hometown is where Cape Wind was our cable for this project and where Cape Wind’s cable was proposing to make landfall. My town sued the federal government when they granted the permit. … So, when this project came around we understood that you don’t shove a project like this into a community; you build it with the community. We had a really good working relationship throughout the process where Vineyard Power understood the project and could provide really useful input about the design of the project as well as community concerns so nothing would come as a surprise when we would do our permitting public hearings. … We knew the concerns and we also had already incorporated that input into our design. …

One of the things people on the island really wanted were those long-term jobs. It was a tough commitment for us to make because there’s only one place that you can build a facility like that on the island because of zoning … but now, the facility is under construction and our commitment is that 100 percent of those workers will be island-based within five years. You don’t relocate people to an island like Martha’s Vineyard. You find, recruit and train the locals to do those jobs because housing is nonexistent. … But I can’t just bring the jobs to a place that says “We want jobs!” if there aren’t the right people to fill those jobs. We needed to find people and figure out what they would need to go from a bartender or a landscaper… to a qualified offshore wind technician. So, we worked with the community in setting up a community college program that was available locally on the island.

LoCO: Are you working or partnering with College of the Redwoods or Cal Poly Humboldt to create similar programs here?

Cullen: It’s still really early in the game but I know both educational institutions have been thinking about [developing those programs] way before we got here. … College of the Redwoods especially because a lot of our jobs – I would say 90 percent – are more technical and don’t require a four-year degree. … I’m going to work on getting them just information about the certifications that we’ve needed and that we’ve seen our suppliers need. And then Cal Poly Humboldt, College of the Redwoods and the Yurok Tribe all have an MOU [memorandum of understanding] to collaborate but it doesn’t sound like there’s a whole lot of detail to it just yet. …

Peckar: Partnerships with universities are absolutely critical … in facilitating in training, workforce development [and] communications, but also in reaching the whole community and ensuring that women and [BIPOC] Black, Indigenous, people of color are also getting the same opportunities as middle-aged white guys. That’s really important. …

LoCO: Going back to the CBA, we still need a certified community benefits organizer, right? We don’t have a place in Humboldt County where these investment funds will be deposited and we don’t know yet how they will be spent. How will that process work here?

Cullen: I mean, there’s basically no roadmap for any of this kind of stuff. So many of the commitments we’ve made and have now executed with Vineyard Wind were written down as a bid or a little project and we submitted it and then suddenly it’s like, “Now make this stuff real. Make it happen. Put people on jobs. Do the [CBA].” As for how it will work here, there aren’t really answers to a lot of those questions.

LoCO: But, at some point, BOEM will have to decide or identify an entity to receive those CBA funds, right?

Peckar: That’s all written out in the Final Sales Notice. … Now there’s a clock, let’s say, and the two developers up here and the three developers down in Morro Bay need to go into these communities and find or meet folks who represent the community and sign these CBAs or come to some arrangements by a certain particular time.

Cullen: And the challenge we have is understanding who that is, right? There might be some people that say, “We represent the community and we know what’s best.” I mean, we just won this lease in December but our teams have already been out here four or five times at this point because we need to get this right. We need to know that the entity or entities that say they represent the community actually do have the tribes, the fishermen, the laborers and all of these partners legitimately involved so they can say, “Yes, this is the entity that will speak on behalf of my community.”

Peckar: The community really needs to understand that this is a partnership. We’re not just going to cut a check and go away. Once the permitting phase starts and we go into a process with the federal government where there are public hearings, we as a company need folks to show up and show their support. …

There are going to be pieces of this project that will require valuable input that are not part of the CBA. One example from the project on the East Coast is, you know, we as a community were really concerned about nighttime lighting from the project. … And the feedback we gave into the project was basically asking if there were technical components they could potentially mitigate. You know, instead of having all 62 turbine lights being on every night all night, what are some options there? They looked into it and it ultimately got approved to use an aircraft detection lighting system. … Those lights will only come on when an airplane flies within a certain level of the turbines. …

This is an iterative process and there are options on the table. We want to work with the community, but there’s also the question of whether it is technically feasible to do certain things. …

LoCO: I understand that building this kind of relationship with the community is really what you’re striving for … and the CBA is a small part of that, but one of the concerns I hear a lot surrounds infrastructure and the housing crisis. Hopefully, we could use some of that for matching funds to build new housing to accommodate the workforce we’re anticipating here. … We want to be sure that we are able to accommodate the growth that goes along with that, but there’s concern that instead of going through some sort of public process … it would end up in, say, the arms of a nonprofit without a public process.

Peckar: Again, going back to the CBA process that we went through with communities on Martha’s Vineyard, you know, there are six towns on the island. One town says one thing and one town wants to do the exact opposite. It was an educational process. We knew that we would never achieve what we wanted to achieve if one town tried to come out and organize independently. 

Back in 2009/2010 when we could kind of see where this process was going, we just did our best to educate everyone along the way at a municipal level to get complete buy-in and build trust. We had to say, “Hey, we’re the organization that could lead us in this direction and we can negotiate on behalf of the whole island … what do we want?” … We formed an advisory committee with members representing all six of the towns, we have a tribal nation on Martha’s Vineyard as well and they are represented. Then there are some nonprofits and others that sit on the steering committee. However, I can’t sit here and say that model will work for you. This community really needs to sit down and have some discussions about the local needs and who they want to negotiate for them, and that’s challenging. 

Cullen: Where we have been the most successful in our community partnerships … is when we’ve been involved in a transparent process with an entity that has the trust of the communities that we’re working with. One in which people see the opportunity, not just in the dollar sitting in the bank, but how to leverage those dollars alongside the project to maximize it all. We’re gonna be bringing in suppliers, we’re gonna be bringing in electricity, we’re gonna be bringing in all of these different things and if that money is used to address some of the barriers to maximizing the overall benefit that works for us and that works for the community.

In Massachusetts, for instance, we have wicked infrastructure issues in those small communities out on the coast and we have a huge wastewater problem. … So, we worked really closely with [one of] the town[s] because we needed permits from the town, we were gonna run cables in their streets and land or our cable at the beach. And they were like, “The sewer thing is a huge problem for us and we’ve got a plan but it’s literally a billion-dollar project.” And so we worked with them and they advanced their timeline to lay some really critical sewer backbone infrastructure in the same route that we were routing our cable. So we said, “Great, we’re gonna open the roads. You guys go ahead and go in first to lay the sewer lines and we’ll come in after, lay the cable and close the roads.” It saved the town like $10 million.

LoCO: Well, the transmission of electricity is a huge issue up here, especially in Southern Humboldt where PG&E is basically at capacity. I have heard the statewide electrical transmission system likened to a series of blood vessels. Here in Humboldt, our lines are like capillaries and we need an aorta to handle and distribute the power that will be generated by the wind turbines. Congressman Jared Huffman and other state representatives are trying to expedite these critical infrastructure improvements but, I’m curious, where do you fit into that process?

Cullen: What I’m hoping is that Lieutenant Governor [Eleni Kounalakis], who was at the labor event we attended earlier, will help further transmission goals in California. Humboldt is so critical – not just for the projects happening in the Humboldt [Wind Energy Area] but for projects up and down the coast [because] the port is going to be booming. We can’t move forward on these goals until there’s improved electrical transmission. … We can’t even really start designing or understanding how big of a project to build until we know more about capacity, who we’re selling the power to [and] what the rates are looking like. There’s so much that needs to happen before we can even start, but as soon as that’s ready we’re itching to go. … 

LoCO: Are you working with lawmakers or with PG&E to try to figure out solutions to make a larger transmission line to the project area?

Doba: Some of our senior management recently met with some elected officials down in Sacramento. At this point, we’re just anxious to make sure the conversation keeps going and then ultimately [leads] to some kind of resolution.

Cullen: I mean, building an offshore wind farm is really a massive undertaking and, on top of that, there are all of these other challenges. We need partners in the state that wants this and they have to support the parts of this that are really theirs to do. … We want to make it better but oftentimes we [as developers] are expected to solve these legacy issues, clean energy, job creation, societal issues, public transportation, etc. … A lot of these things that really require all these entities to work with us to provide the bones to make it work.

LoCO: One thing we haven’t touched on yet are concerns surrounding the commercial fishing industry. I’m sure your team is well-versed on this topic having worked with coastal communities on the East Coast. … A lot of the fishermen I’ve spoken with are worried they’re going to lose access to fishing grounds. Over the years, their fishing grounds have gotten smaller and smaller due to increased regulations around commercial fishing. Can you talk about how you worked with commercial fishermen on the East Coast to alleviate some of these concerns? How will that inform your conversations here?

Cullen: [Crista Bank] is this totally badass woman who does our fisheries work and she’s very well respected in the community. It’s so key for us because she knows these guys, they trust her. They give her an earful regularly, she takes it because she knows them, and then they go get a beer, you know? One thing we heard from [the fishermen] really early on – and what we’ve been working with Crista on – is making sure they don’t miss out on an economic opportunity, too. It’s the same thing on the East Coast: the fishing grounds are shrinking but the quota isn’t. 

We worked with them through the permitting process, engaging with them, listening to them, what are their concerns … and we ended up rearranging our entire turbine layout to be responsive to their concerns. … We had to start from scratch with all the survey work, but it was the right thing to do. We spaced them out a full nautical mile so you can now go any which way through it. It was really tough to do but we did it and all [six] of our lease holders in that area agreed to have the same like layout. …

We’ve also provided funds to get fishermen trained to a certain standard … and vessels that want to work on the projects, we said, “Hey, we’ve got scope and we’ve got a need for you. We appreciate and recognize your knowledge of how the sea works and we see that you’re a valuable asset in making this project successful.” …  So they go out there with us and they just kind of, like, babysit our vessels and make sure that any incoming or passerby vessels are understanding what’s going on. And we’ve found that the fishermen really appreciate the work. …

Peckar: We want to get a better understanding of the fleet here in Humboldt, who the players are and who’s who. That’s what we’re getting into now, really trying to lay that foundation with some potential fishery representatives and we want to hire a fishing liaison for the West Coast. … We will also start up some surveying work in the next couple of years which might include opportunities for fishermen to go out on a survey vessel to make sure there aren’t any interactions with crab pots or help us in identifying someone else’s gear. We need people who are already a part of the fishing community that people really trust because, ultimately, this is all about building trust. …

Cullen: We only had to do a year of pre-construction surveys but we did three. We knew that understanding the impacts that we have is going to be important and so we went above and beyond on that because we knew it was gonna be critical. We kind of set the bar for the other developers and we encouraged them to do a lot of research as well so, ideally, years down the line we can say, “Yes, we built this project based on real science that you guys all bought into.” And the impact really hasn’t been what everyone was worried it would be and we can really, genuinely back that up. …

LoCO: And going back to working with other developers, what does that process look like? Are you all using the same technology? Are you working together on certain studies? Is each development going to have its own set of operating standards? In what situations do you and do you not work together?

Cullen: What’s tricky along the East Coast – and I hope it’s better for us here – is that we’re asked to compete on things [and] competing yields lesser overall results for the communities that we’re collaborating with. … We need to all come together on what the technical specs will be that we’re all working towards. Right now, I mean, how many foundation designs are there for floaters? Twenty? Thirty? Ideally, we all use the same technology. …

LoCO: Well, to wrap things up, what are the next big steps for Vineyard Offshore? Any other closing remarks?

Peckar: Well, I’m going to be moving out to the West Coast in October. I’ll be based out of the Bay Area but I’ll be coming up here pretty regularly and building a team. I’m really looking forward to getting to know the folks here and building a relationship with this community. … We want to keep the conversation going with the folks at Crowley and the port and keep working at the state level to keep things going with power purchase agreements. … It would be great to have a little cross-pollination and bring folks from the East Coast out here and vice-versa to learn more about the work we’re already doing out there and share that knowledge.

Cullen: I think continued engagement with the port and making sure we’re all aligned on what’s getting built and that it’ll support what we need. I think a lot of [this process] is just building relationships in the community. … I think the next couple of years are really going to be getting to know this place and them getting to know us. There’s a lot it’s still unknown! We’re not just being cute about it, there’s a lot about this industry that we don’t really know yet.

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