Oregon is facing largest energy development threat in generations

Oregon is facing its largest energy development project in generations: more than 1,800 square miles of offshore wind turbines proposed for the central and southern Oregon coast. That’s an area 6 times the size of Crater Lake National Park.

According to a 2022 paper in the journal Ocean Sustainability, “offshore wind may lead to significant environmental impacts.”

That’s not a surprise when you consider what’s involved: hundreds of steel turbines, each as tall as the Empire State Building, floating on platforms the size of baseball stadiums anchored to the sea floor with miles of steel cables.

Wind-driven upwelling of nutrients from the deep ocean feeds one of the world’s richest ecosystems along our coast. Wind turbines could even modify this. Researchers found that turbines could shift upwelling “outside the bounds of natural variability,” and say “the consequences… are currently unknown.”

This is one reason why the Yurok Tribe, Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria, Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad Rancheria, Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw, and the Tolowi Dee-ni’ Nation have passed resolutions opposing offshore wind energy in our region.

Global warming is a crisis. But Oregon has experienced energy projects purporting to be green that end up harming our environment. The hydroelectric dams in the Columbia watershed provide cheap power, but at the cost of the salmon.

Now is the time to stand up alongside scientists, grassroots environmentalists, Native American tribes, fishermen, and everyday people to protect the Pacific Ocean.

Max Wilbert is an environmentalist and the co-author of “Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.” He lives in Lane County.