October 21, 2020 — A new bill from House Democrats turns to the oceans as a way to fight climate change, proposing to expand offshore wind while barring drilling along America’s coasts.
The more than 300-page legislation is broadly billed as a “blue carbon” bill — a way to harvest clean energy while protecting fisheries and resources like marshes and wetlands that can store carbon and protect eroding shorelines.
The Ocean Based Climate Solutions Act, introduced Tuesday, comes as the ocean is rapidly warming and acidifying, a result of climate change and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.
The bill directs the Department of the Interior to up the number of permits for offshore wind projects, where higher wind speeds allow windmills to generate more electricity than they do on land.
The bill also repackages some measures already before the House, such as a pledge to conserve 30 percent of oceans by 2030 and an approved measure to bar offshore drilling along both coasts that has failed to advance in the Senate.