Saving Seafood

Soaring Costs Threaten U.S. Offshore-Wind Buildout

January 3, 2023 — Offshore wind developers are facing financial challenges that threaten to derail several East Coast projects critical to reaching the Biden administration’s near-term clean-energy targets.

Supply-chain snarls, rising interest rates and inflationary pressures are making projects far more expensive to build. Now, some developers are looking to renegotiate financing agreements to keep their projects under way.

The Biden administration has set a target for the U.S. to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030—enough to supply electricity to roughly 10 million homes. Analysts say that target will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if cost and supply issues persist.

“We’re seeing unexpected and unprecedented macroeconomic challenges,” said David Hardy, chief executive of the Americas for Danish power company Ørsted A/S, which is developing about five gigawatts of offshore wind projects off the coast between Rhode Island and Maryland.

Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish power company Iberdrola SA, is developing a 1.2-gigawatt project called Commonwealth Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. The company in December asked the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to terminate its review of contracts the company negotiated with utilities serving the state. The company said it now intends to scrap the contracts and rebid the project next year to account for higher costs. 

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

How Maine lobstermen turned a ‘slap in the face’ from the White House into a policy victory

December 23, 2022 — Maine lobstermen who are fighting a federal regulation that threatens to eliminate their state’s lobstering heritage scored a policy victory in the $1.7 trillion spending bill after a White House state dinner put the controversy in the spotlight.

After a push from Maine lawmakers, Congress inserted a provision into the 2023 omnibus spending bill that will temporarily pause a federal rule aimed at protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale, but that lobstermen said threatened to put family-owned lobster fisheries out of business.

The regulatory battle had been hard fought for several months, but with little national attention. But when President Biden served 200 Maine lobsters at a White House state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron, that put a spotlight on the controversy that opened the door for Biden’s crippling policy to be curbed, at least for now.

“As a commercial fisherman, I’m glad to see lobster on the menu at the White House,” Dustin Delano, vice president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview after the White House dinner.

“But as a commercial fisherman, I’m also a bit set back,” Delano said. “It almost seems like a slap in the face like… our industry is not worth saving.”

Just a few weeks after Biden and his VIP guests dined on the New England delicacy, a delegation of Maine lawmakers successfully added a rider into next year’s spending bill that Congress was rushing to pass this week. That language will pause the regulation for six years, giving Congress time to work up a new solution that doesn’t put the lobstermen out of business.

Read the full article at Fox News

Biden administration announces additional H-2B visas

December 14, 2022 — The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden announced Monday, 12 December, that additional H-2B visas will be available for American companies in need of temporary labor over the next nine months.

The U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have jointly issued a temporary final rule that will allow nonagricultural employers to apply for 64,716 additional visas, which have been divvied up into four pools. According to a DHS news release, it’s the first time those two federal agencies have taken such a step.

Read the full article at SeafoodSoure

Maine lobstermen warn Biden admin is trying to put them out of business with harsh eco rules

December 7, 2022 — Industry groups and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from Maine are sounding the alarm that a pending federal environmental regulation would crush the state’s vaunted lobster industry.

The proponents of Maine’s nearly $1 billion lobster industry have argued that federal rules aimed at protecting the endangered right whale species from fishing equipment in federally-managed waters are unfairly attacking blue-collar lobstermen who rely on the resource to make a living. They have warned that the regulation threatens the livelihood of thousands of Maine lobstermen and individuals employed in supporting industries.

“I don’t know what we would even retrain lobstermen to do. A lot of guys are already talking about potentially selling their boats and moving elsewhere,” Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), told FOX Business in an interview. “The economy is so rural here that it’s, you couldn’t overstate how much losing the lobster dollars coming into the communities will debilitate everything.”

“It is just such a special and unique situation that we have here in Maine,” McCarron continued. “That’s why we’re all fighting so hard. We’re going to do everything in our power to keep this industry going and to keep these families here and to have lobstermen be able to proudly raise their children and see another generation of lobstermen come through because we need that.”

Read the full article at Fox Business

 

Biden’s lavish lobster dinner doesn’t change his hostility to seafood industry, fish groups say

December 3, 2022 — The following is an excerpt from an article by Fox News:

A pair of fish and seafood associations weighed in on President Biden’s upcoming lavish lobster dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Biden faced backlash on Twitter on Wednesday night from Democratic Maine Rep. Jared Golden over his upcoming Thursday seafood dinner with Macron featuring Maine lobster.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, commended Golden for calling out Biden on the issue and said that his organization has had trouble meeting with the current administration.

Vanasse said that it’s not just lobster, but other seafood industries like tuna and swordfish are having issues meeting with the White House.

“I applaud the congressman for calling out the administration’s hypocrisy when it comes to our domestic fisheries and their policies,” Vanasse said.

“This is not the first time that something like this has happened, but it is good to see, and particularly a Democrat pointing it out because this administration has frankly not been friendly or helpful to our domestic fishing industry,” he continued.

Vanasse said “the most egregious example of that was last summer with regard to the Atlantic Marine Monument, which President Obama created with very little scientific backing using the Antiquities Act.” He noted that the monument move prevents tuna, lobster and swordfish fishing and that America’s “sustainable red crab industry is being kicked out of that area,” as well.

“We spent three years working with the Trump administration to reverse President Obama’s ban on commercial fishing in that area,” Vanasse said. “And they did a very diligent job of looking at science before they agreed to remove the ban and allow our fishermen in that area.”

Vanasse said that the Biden administration has not followed through on its policymaking with science over politics, and that when they “were fighting for our offshore lobster industry, our red crab industry, our fishermen and our tuna fishermen” last summer, they “got one hour to defend the industry with staff at the Department of the Interior before there was even a Senate-confirmed secretary in place.”

He said that on Columbus Day last year, the Biden administration cut off their “fishermen’s right to fish for lobster, crab, swordfish and tuna” in the [Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument], adding that “this administration has been very much in bed with the more extreme environmentalists.”

“And I mean, with regard to the monument, it’s not surprising because the champion of the monument in the Obama administration was Monica Medina, and she’s married to Ron Klain, who’s the White House chief of staff,” said Vanasse. “So when we were fighting for those fisheries, we couldn’t get any Democrats to stand up to the White House. Basically, they just told us that they had tried. They called [the Department of the Interior], they called the White House. They were essentially told that there was no way, because if Trump did it, it had to be bad, and so they were going to reverse what Trump did. No science, no study. One hour of communication with the entire… with all of the people who represent those commercial fisheries that were affected.”

Vanasse said that the White House has likely served tuna and swordfish in addition to lobster, and he thinks Golden’s speaking out “will actually get the president’s attention and perhaps maybe we can actually get the kind of attention from the Biden administration that we were able to get from the Trump administration and not have our fishermen be treated as second-class citizens.”

Vanasse said he does not believe Biden “has personally done much of anything for the fishing industry” and has “delegated it to appointees in his administration.”

Regarding the dinner, Vanasse praised the White House for “thumbing their nose” at “the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program and at Whole Foods for blindly following Seafood Watch” and that he was “delighted to see them do that and for them to take a New England domestic fishery and serve it.”

He continued, “That’s what the White House should do. They should be doing this more. But it’s a bit hypocritical at the same time to be moving forward with regulations that are harming our domestic fisheries and also serving the product. You know, they’re trying to have their lobster and eat it, too, so to speak.”

Read the full story at Fox News

White House ocean climate plan must include fishermen’s ecological knowledge, advocates say

November 25, 2022 — Overall the letter stresses the needs to collect, understand and incorporate fishermen’s ecological knowledge in climate policy; acknowledge commercial fishing’s role “to the nation’s overall well-being;” consider costs, impacts and benefits in decision making; and prioritizing collaborations between agencies and stakeholders.

The process started with an Oct. 4 White House request for information to prepare the ocean climate plan, announcing the intent to span multiple activities from increasing offshore wind energy to conserving marine areas to reducing shipping emissions.

That planning process “has the opportunity to include those on the front lines of climate change,” said Mike Conroy, RODA’s West Coast director.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Looming railroad strike, barge back-up straining US supply chains

November 22, 2022 — An impending rail strike in the U.S. could further entangle supply chains and drive up inflation.

Four major railroad labor unions have rejected a tentative agreement with freight railroad companies brokered by the administration of U.S. Joe Biden over the summer. Even though eight of the 12 major railroad worker unions have ratified the agreement, several have pledged solidarity with those that have not.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Biden administration wins reprieve in fixing Endangered Species Act flaws

November 17, 2022 — The Biden administration can reevaluate changes made by the previous administration to the Endangered Species Act without at the same time fighting a trio of lawsuits by environmentalists and state and local governments that challenged the 2019 overhaul of the law.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Oakland on Wednesday granted the requests by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to send the 2019 changes back to them for further reconsideration. The judge left the changes to the ESA intact, saying he couldn’t vacate them without having first ruled on the merits of the environmentalists’ claims.

The Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental organization sued in 2019 after the Trump administration weakened several provision of the ESA such as not automatically extending protections against killing, harassing, harming or collecting threatened species as well as endangered species.

Read the full article at Courthouse News

Inflation’s next victim: U.S. offshore wind projects

November 15, 2022 — A rising tide of interest rates, supply chain bottlenecks and inflation is threatening the Biden administration’s ambitious offshore wind targets, creating a significant challenge for one of the president’s top climate priorities.

Recent weeks have seen a series of developers raise concerns over rising costs. In New Jersey, a developer warned earlier this month that a planned 98-turbine project off the coast of New Jersey could threaten its finances.

In New England, two developers with contracts to sell power to Massachusetts have sought to renegotiate the deals, only to get shot down by state regulators.

Many developers bid aggressively in state auctions to win those contracts but are now locked into agreements that didn’t account for rising costs, said Sam Huntington, director of North American power and renewables at S&P Global Commodity Insights.

The financial difficulties call into question the Biden administration’s goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of this decade.

“We don’t see them hitting that,” Huntington said. “It is going to be something to watch. I don’t have a good sense of whether these will get renegotiated or canceled.”

The doubts are shared by other analysts. Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees the United States falling 3 to 4 GW short of its 2030 target due to long development timelines and an immature supply chain. The London-based renewables market intelligence firm Renewables Consulting Group estimates the United States will reach just over 25 GW by 2030.

Read the full article at E&E News

1st lease sale to be held for offshore wind on West Coast

October 20, 2022 — The Biden administration will hold the first-ever lease sale for offshore wind energy on the West Coast, officials said Tuesday.

The Dec. 6 sale will target areas in the Pacific Ocean off central and northern California— the first U.S. auction for commercial-scale floating offshore wind energy development. The administration hailed the upcoming sale at at a conference for offshore wind developers and experts in Providence, Rhode Island.

“We’re not just committed to the country’s transition to a clean energy economy, one that combats climate change, creates good-paying jobs and ensures economic opportunities are accessible to all. We’re actually taking action and driving results,” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Amanda Lefton told the group.

The final sale notice for the auction will outline the details and lease terms for five areas off California, enough for 4.5 gigawatts of offshore wind to power more than 1.5 million homes and create thousands of new jobs, she said. The notice will include lease stipulations to promote a domestic supply chain and create union jobs.

Read the full article at Associated Press