Despite resistance from the Trump White House, California government officials and administrators at the state’s ports say they are still going full-speed ahead on offshore wind projects.

“Now more than ever, California needs to be the hand around that candle of hope and keep the momentum going” for the state to reach its ambitious wind energy goals, David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission, said at a symposium Friday in Long Beach.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state policymakers expect offshore wind to generate as much as 5 gigawatts of power by 2030 and 25 gigawatts by 2045. For perspective, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in San Luis Obispo produces 2.2 gigawatts of capacity, which accounts for about 9% of the state’s power mix each year.

Five companies collectively bid $751.1 million in December 2022 to win the leases to build wind farms off the coasts of Morro Bay in Central California and Humboldt Bay in Northern California. When completed, each project that covers tens of thousands of acres will be located at least 20 miles from the mainland, in federal waters.

But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued a review of leasing and permitting practices for all wind energy projects in the U.S. and called for a temporary withdrawal of all areas on the outer Continental Shelf from offshore wind leasing.

“We acknowledge new uncertainties in federal policies and we have important work ahead of us to understand where that federal policy is actually headed and what the implications are for California,” said Jana Ganion, Newsom’s senior adviser for offshore wind.

But speakers expressed optimism the projects will go forward.

“The reality is that many of the key milestones involving federal action fall after or near the end of the Trump administration,” said Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Hollywood. “So even that less supportive stance doesn’t need to slow us down ... We’re not putting a pause on this for four years.”

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis pointed to the recent passage of Proposition 4, a $10 billion bond measure that includes $850 million for clean energy infrastructure, including offshore wind. She also said “California is a powerhouse economy” that generates a gross domestic product of roughly $4 trillion, making the Golden State the fifth-largest economy in the world.

“It is possible that there are things that happen over the next three years and 11 months that could be additional hurdles,” Kounalakis said, “but there is nothing they can throw at us that can stop us.”

The development of offshore wind is vital to the Port of Long Beach, which plans to spend $4.7 billion to construct a 400-acre terminal called Tier Wind that will stage, store and assemble the massive wind turbines. When fully assembled, the turbines will then be towed by sea from Long Beach to wind lease areas in Morro and Humboldt bays.

“We’ve been through many administrations in our history here at the Port of Long Beach,” said Mario Cordero, the port’s CEO. “So we’ll navigate through the policies that are applied by the various administrations.”

But the wind farms have generated some local opposition.

A pair of organizations of commercial fishermen have filed lawsuits to try to stop the Morro Bay projects, fearing they will disrupt the region’s fishing industry and marine habitats.

The REACT Alliance, a nonprofit based in San Luis Obispo, cites environmental concerns such as blades striking and killing migratory birds, mooring lines corroding in saltwater and entangling marine life, plus potential harm the sound from wind turbines have on whales.

“We would like to thank President Trump for taking such a decisive stance on stopping the proliferation of offshore wind in the U.S.,” the group said in a statement after the executive order was issued. “The halting of all new offshore wind permits will have a significant impact on the future of the industry in California and will make the costly onshore buildout for the extensive plans for new leases by our governor obsolete and absurd.”

Unlike the East Coast, where turbines can be bolted into the seabed, the continental shelf off the coast of the Pacific plunges steeply.

That means offshore wind farms in California will float on the water’s surface, tethered or moored by cables to the ocean floor. Electricity generated by turbines will be transmitted to a floating substation and carried to a power plant onshore via buried cables.

California will be the first region in the U.S. to use floating wind turbines.

The projects in the Morro Bay and Humboldt County areas are still in the very early stages of development.

While final designs are still to be submitted, each turbine will soar as high as a 70-story building, with blades larger than a football field to harvest the maximum amount of wind. At a distance of at least 20 miles, the towers, the California Energy Commission says, are “not expected to be highly visible” from the shore.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, joined the symposium by videoconference.

A big supporter of the Block Island Wind Farm in his home state and the industry in general, Whitehouse said lawsuits and potential complaints from GOP lawmakers whose states receive funding from the Biden administration’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure law may upend Trump’s executive orders.

“I believe things will return to a more of a state of normalcy, if not even if not true normalcy, as the pressure from court decisions and the pressure from frustrated Republican legislatures begins to sink in,” Whitehouse said.

There are no plans to develop offshore wind projects in San Diego and Southern California. Wind speeds in the south are not as steady and strong as those in Central and Northern California.

Also, military officials, in discussions with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management designated Southern California a “wind exclusion” area because they fear offshore wind facilities would interfere with training missions.