The floating offshore wind industry is at a pivotal moment in the U.S.

The process to develop offshore wind along the U.S. Pacific Coast began back in 2016. Now, the stage is being set for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to hold its first lease auctions for rights to develop waters off the Pacific Coast this fall.

In early April, BOEM released a draft environmental assessment for the Morro Bay Wind Energy Area in Central California. The draft environmental assessment for the Humboldt WEA in Northern California was released in January, setting the stage for leases in both areas to be auctioned off this fall.

Necy Sumait, a regional supervisor in BOEM's Office of Strategic Resources, said the process remains on track, benefited by lessons learned from the East Coast fixed-bottom offshore wind market.

"From a process perspective, I think the BOEM requirements in terms of a Construction and Operations Plan should be fairly clear now to developers," Sumait said while acknowledging that the pressure is on for the agency to execute a successful lease auction following years of preparation and stakeholder engagement.

"That's what keeps us up at night," she said.

The 240,898 acres within the Morro Bay WEA are some 20 miles off San Luis Obispo County, California. The area is expected to bring 3 GW of clean energy to the grid when fully developed.

The Humboldt WEA will host three commercial leases totaling 132,368 acres located 21 miles offshore of the city of Eureka. The Humboldt WEA is expected to support the development of at least 1.6 GW of offshore wind.

The respective depths of 900-1,300m and 500-1,100m for the Morro Bay and Humboldt WEAs require floating offshore wind technology.

Industry leaders from Aker Offshore Wind, Principle Power, BOEM, and Offshore Wind California discussed the crucial next steps for the floating offshore wind industry in a recent RENEWABLE+ Series virtual event, which can now be viewed for free on-demand.

Interest in the California offshore wind leases is expected to be high.

Ørsted, Shell, Ocean Winds (EDP Renewables/ENGIE), Equinor, bp, RWE Renewables, Castle Wind (TotalEnergies/Trident Winds), Arevia Power, JERA Renewables NA, Marubeni Power International, and Aker Offshore Wind are among the companies that responded to BOEM's Call for Information and Nominations for the Morro Bay WEA.

Auctions for the rights to develop the U.S. Pacific Coast with floating offshore wind stands to be "extremely competitive," according to Aker Offshore Wind's senior vice president of U.S. operations, Jonah Margulis.

"All the indications are that it's going to be extremely competitive. Not just in California, if you look globally in floating (offshore wind) there is a tremendous acceleration of the projects, of the scale of the projects. We're now talking large commercial-scale floating projects. A few years ago that was maybe a pipe dream and now that's reality."

What will follow BOEM's lease auctions is a race to build out the infrastructure needed to help the industry thrive for years to come. Both electric grid constraints and port availability remain challenges for the first two development areas offshore California.

The Humboldt Bay area can support around 150 MW of additional capacity without substantial grid upgrades, according to a report on the U.S. floating offshore wind market by the Global Wind Energy Council. Morro Bay is less constrained due to the impending retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.

When it comes to transmission planning, California has the benefit of a single grid operator in CAISO. Sumait from BOEM said CAISO has been proactive on transmission planning to meet the needs of offshore wind with support from the agency.

In February, CAISO released its first-ever 20-year transmission outlook that factored in transmission support for 10 GW of offshore wind.

"The North Coast, where there's greater wind, that's a little more challenging in terms of transmission but California has already started the planning process," Sumait said. "I think there's a good roadmap going forward."

There are currently no ports along the West Coast that are capable of supporting floating offshore wind activities, according to a recent report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Principle Power, while based in California, had to go to Europe to demonstrate the viability and the bankability of its floating offshore wind platform technology. But Antoine Peiffer, the company's vice president of engineering, said he has seen encouraging progress on port planning in recent months.

In March, the California Energy Commission approved a $10.5 million grant for renovations at the Port of Humboldt Bay to support floating offshore wind activities. The grant will fund preliminary engineering and design work, conducting site surveys and special studies, preparing necessary environmental impact assessments, implementing early construction, and initiating environmental mitigation measures.

"This is really encouraging because we need these types of facilities to be revitalized to serve this incoming industry," Peiffer said during the RENEWABLE+ Series. "What we're doing is trying to raise awareness and work with developers to understand how we're going to deploy these big scale projects."

Floating offshore wind developers and suppliers will also have to comply with the Jones Act for vessel deployment. The industry has some advantages over fixed-bottom offshore wind, though, since floating offshore wind turbines and platforms are largely completed at port.

The advocacy group Offshore Wind California is focusing much of its attention on state resource planning for floating offshore wind.

In its latest integrated resource plan, the California Public Utilities Commission included, for the first time, offshore wind, although at a modest target of 1.7 GW by 2032. The CPUC said it will evaluate the results of a CAISO study on the transmission needs and costs to interconnect around 8 GW of offshore wind, which will be included in the next IRP cycle.

Adam Stern, executive director of Offshore Wind California, said increased procurement targets are critical to providing certainty to floating offshore wind developers and suppliers.

"We're going to see those numbers in the CPUC's plans ramp up and I think that ultimately will be a great confidence booster for the developers that there's actually someone who's going to take the power from the ocean and bring it into the grid," Stern said.

Margulis of Aker Offshore Wind described the importance of state procurement targets and offtake agreements as "everything" for a developer.

All of these issues discussed in the RENWABLE+ Series -- port availability, transmission planning, stakeholder engagement, and procurement -- need to be addressed simultaneously, Stern added, in order for the industry to prosper along the Pacific Coast.