Dr. Noel Hacegaba, CEO, Port of Long Beach, address at Pacific Offshore Wind Summit

Hacegaba says “teamwork makes the dream work” for offshore wind power

Good morning, and welcome to Long Beach.

Chair Hochschild, thank you for your kind remarks, and thank you for the leadership the California Energy Commission continues to provide in advancing California’s clean energy future. The CEC has been an important partner to California’s ports and to the broader zero-emissions transition, and we are grateful for it.

To everyone in this room: public officials, developers, labor leaders, tribal partners, environmental advocates, engineers, port colleagues, and the many partners who have traveled here from up and down the coast and across the country — welcome. You are exactly the people who can move this from vision to reality, and I am honored that you are starting your week with us.

Long Beach is a gateway. For more than a century, we have been the place where ships meet shore, and the global economy meets American workers. But today, more than ever, we are also a gateway to the future, to a cleaner, more secure, more prosperous energy future for California and for the country.

That is why this summit matters. And it is why the conversation we are having this week could not be more timely.

This is a pivotal moment for energy. Rising fuel costs are sharpening the case for domestically produced power and for energy independence. A few weeks ago, the last oil tanker to depart the Middle East before the start of the Iran conflict arrived right here at the Port of Long Beach. The California Energy Commission says that the current and projected inventory is only sufficient for about six weeks of demand under normal operating conditions.

Meanwhile, demand is climbing, from electrification, to domestic manufacturing, to digitization and the rise of AI and data storage. The grid we built for the last century cannot carry us through the next.

This is renewable energy's moment.

And at the Port of Long Beach, we are not waiting. We are investing. We are building. We are partnering. We are turning this moment into momentum.

You see the expansion of our clean technology portfolio across our operations. Zero-emissions cargo-handling equipment in our terminals. Clean shipping corridors taking shape with our partners across the Pacific, like Shanghai and our renewed Green and Digital Shipping Corridor agreement with the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore and the Port of Los Angeles. Truck programs moving drayage off diesel. And now, new partnerships like the world’s first port-powered Green Truck Corridor, which connects the heart of the nation’s agriculture production in California’s Central Valley – an industry valued at $40 billion dollars – to its largest port complex.

We are not just adapting to the future. We are building the Port of the Future, today.

That ambition is anchored in our 2050 Vision, a roadmap to double our container volumes to 20 million units a year while becoming the world's first zero-emissions port. To get there, we are committing $3.3 billion in capital investments over the next decade. We are modernizing infrastructure. We are deploying digital systems that will dramatically improve efficiency and visibility. And we are doing all of it without losing what has made Long Beach great in the first place, a deep partnership with our workers, our neighbors, and our region.

Today, this Port moves cargo valued at $300 billion a year and supports 2.7 million American jobs. Industry leaders have named Long Beach the Best West Coast Seaport in North America for seven years running, and the Best Green Seaport in 2025. We are one of only eighteen commercial strategic seaports in the country with a duty to support national defense. We invest $3 million a year in our community sponsorship program, which helps to support local nonprofits while also educating the public about Port projects and programs. And with our workforce development efforts, we are nurturing the next generation of port workers; students from this region and beyond who will build the careers of tomorrow.

The next chapter of that story is about building the infrastructure, partnerships and technology needed for the future. California’s offshore wind goals cannot be achieved without world-class infrastructure, strong public-private partnerships, and a coordinated supply chain. Ports will have an important role to play in that future, just as we have an important role to play today in advancing cleaner goods movement, cleaner equipment, cleaner fuels and cleaner freight corridors.

At the Port of Long Beach, we see all of this as connected. Offshore wind, zero-emissions cargo-handling equipment, electric and hydrogen-powered transportation, green shipping corridors and cleaner inland freight movement are all part of the same long-term ambition for clean air -- and a thriving state economy.

That transition requires more than one project or one technology. It requires collaboration across government, industry, labor, communities, and the private sector. It requires investment. It requires patience. And it requires ports to continue doing what we have always done: connect people, markets, infrastructure, and opportunity.

Because here is the bigger picture. The clean energy transition is not only an environmental story. It is an economic story. It will create opportunities in manufacturing, logistics, construction, engineering, maritime operations, and workforce development. It will help meet rising energy demand from electrification, data centers, artificial intelligence and domestic manufacturing. And it will strengthen our grid and our national security by reducing dependence on imported fuels and volatile global markets.

These are jobs that cannot be outsourced. They are rooted in place. They are rooted in our community. The Port of Long Beach has always been an engine driving working-class opportunity --— and the zero-emissions transition gives us the chance to write that next chapter, with union labor, local hiring and real investment in workforce training.

At a time of global energy volatility, offshore wind is not just a climate strategy. It is a national security strategy. And the world is watching to see what California does next.

What we do next will be decided, in large part, by the conversations that happen in rooms like this one.

So my charge to all of you is simple. Use this summit. Push each other. Solve hard problems together. The policymakers in this room, the developers, the labor leaders, the tribes, the environmental partners, the port colleagues and the clean energy innovators; none of us can do this alone. But together, we can.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

At the Port of Long Beach, we are not waiting for the future of clean energy. We are building it. And we are grateful to be building it alongside all of you.