Saving Seafood

Offshore wind faces more financial turbulence in 2024

January 8, 2024 — The offshore wind industry is hoping for new momentum in 2024 to counter the broken contracts, canceled wind farms and missed targets characterizing its last 18 months.

While experts say the nascent industry is getting back on its feet after being thrashed by inflationary costs and an immature supply chain after the pandemic, the enormous scale of building a new U.S. renewable sector from scratch still poses significant challenges that could stall a key plank of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.

“There is an adjustment going on in the industry that I read very clearly as we’re trying to build an industry for which we have no supply chain,” said Eric Hines, an engineering professor at Tufts University who studies the offshore wind industry. “Our demand has outstripped not only the U.S. supply chain but the global supply chain.”

The obstacles are coming to a head as Biden faces a tough election year and is aiming to prove his climate bona fides to needed voters on the left, some of whom have criticized the administration for not meeting 2020 campaign promises such as ending new oil drilling on public lands.

The Interior Department has 10 months to deliver on other White House offshore wind promises before Election Day, including pledges to approve 16 wind arrays by 2025 and hold lease sales in areas like the Gulf of Maine.

But optimism for the industry is growing as inflation eases and interest rates trend downward. Also, states have boosted enthusiasm by seeking contracts for a whopping 14 gigawatts of offshore wind power despite the harsh economic realities that have pushed up prices to build wind farms.

“I think the headlines are different for 2024,” said Theodore Paradise, an energy attorney at K&L Gates. “We’ve got better contracts, we’ve got better timelines, we’ve got a better sense of the supply chain.”

With the administration and industry set to make decisions in coming months that will drive the industry’s future, here are three issues to watch with offshore wind in 2024:

Read the full article at E&E News

Biden signs Port Infrastructure Development Program revision into law

January 7, 2024 — U.S President Joe Biden has signed into law a clarification of the Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) that will ensure projects supporting commercial fishing operations can access funding under that program.

The PIDP is a federal program that provides grants to port authorities, states, and local governments for port-related infrastructure projects; however, vague language left it unclear whether PIDP grants could be awarded to commercial fishing projects.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Biden unveils environmental justice strategy for ocean communities

January 4, 2023 — The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled an environmental justice strategy focused on communities dependent on the ocean or marine resources during the United Nations’ Conference of Parties in December 2023.

The federal strategy outlines overarching goals for advancing environmental justice for communities relying “on the ocean and Great Lakes for economic, cultural, spiritual, recreational, and food security purposes.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Offshore wind in the U.S. hit headwinds in 2023. Here’s what you need to know

December 27, 2023 — There’s a lot riding on the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry: the ability to tap into a huge source of clean energy and reduce carbon emissions, the opportunity to create thousands of jobs, the unique chance to jumpstart a new domestic manufacturing industry.

For these reasons, President Biden has made the success of the industry a pillar of his climate agenda. His administration has set an ambitious target of getting 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind power flowing into the grid by 2030, which is enough electricity to power 10 million homes.

Read the full article at wbur

David and Lucile Packard Foundation place equity, justice at the forefront of its ocean grants

December 27, 2023 — Trustees of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation have approved an initiative to make justice and equity central tenets of the organization’s grantmaking efforts.

The initiative, which aims to provide more equitable and durable support – both regionally and locally – to Indigenous peoples, fishers, and other communities dependent on the ocean, is currently in a transitional phase as it consolidates several strategies into a single, integrated ocean initiative structured around three primary portfolios of work: global fisheries, ocean habitats and communities, and ocean-based climate solutions.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Biden expands clampdown on U.S. imports of China-processed Russian seafood

December 26, 2023 — President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order enabling the closure of a sanctions loophole that has allowed the U.S. importation of large quantities of Russian-caught pollock, cod, salmon and crab processed in China.

The action has been sought by North Pacific seafood industry officials — and their congressional allies — who say that Chinese-processed Russian seafood has contributed to soft U.S. markets and lower prices paid to Alaska fishermen.

The crackdown on the seafood imports is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to add bite to the U.S. sanctions rolled out in a March 2022 executive order responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The initial seafood sanction banned the imports of Russian seafood exported directly to the United States, but allowed those products to move freely to American consumers if they were first processed in another country.

Biden’s Friday action expands U.S. ability to sanction financial institutions, and also includes language that will enable tougher sanctions on Russian seafood and diamonds even if “substantially transformed” in another country.

Read the full article at the Seattle Times

Biden administration orders crackdown on Russian seafood imports

December 26, 2023 — President Joe Biden Dec. 22 signed an executive order expanding the U.S. ban on Russian seafood to include imports of Russia-originated seafood processed in third countries, including China.

The unnumbered executive order expands U.S. Executive Order 14068 to prohibit the importation of seafood “harvested in Russian waters or by Russia-flagged vessels, even if these products are then transformed in a third country.”

“The United States has been clear: those who are supplying goods or processing transactions that materially support Russia’s military industrial base are complicit in Russia’s brutal violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Biden said in a statement.

Biden said the executive order resulted in part from the G7 Leaders’ statement, issued Dec. 6. The order called for the group’s seven members – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the U.S., and the European Union – to step up its efforts against evasion and circumvention of their sanctions and export controls measures on Russian goods. The statement called for additional actions to further curtail Russia profiting from the export of its commodities, including through the imposition of measures to limit their sale through third countries.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Environmentalists Face Off Against Environmentalists Over Offshore Wind Projects

December 2, 2023 — Offshore wind turbines are pitting environmentalists against environmentalists—threatening to impede progress toward an ambitious U.S. goal for such projects.

The Energy Department estimates offshore wind turbines could produce as much as 20% of regional power needs along the densely populated Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine by 2050.

To reach that goal, the Biden administration had hoped to green-light 30 gigawatts from utility-scale offshore wind farms by 2030—enough to power nine million homes. That now seems wildly ambitious, as billions of dollars in projects have been canceled amid staggering cost overruns, soaring interest rates and supply-chain delays.

Added to these economic woes are persistent environmental concerns, as attested to by some recent federal lawsuits. In September, for example, Cape May County, N.J., and a coalition of regional environmental, fisheries and tourism groups sought to stop development of two utility-scale projects off the New Jersey coast.

Read the full story at the the Wall Street Journal

Biden’s clean energy agenda faces mounting headwinds

November 25, 2023 — Canceled offshore wind projects, imperiled solar factories, fading demand for electric vehicles.

A year after passage of the largest climate change legislation in U.S. history, meant to touch off a boom in American clean energy development, economic realities are fraying President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Soaring financing and materials costs, unreliable supply chains, delayed rulemaking in Washington and sluggish permitting have wrought havoc ranging from offshore wind developer Orsted’s (ORSTED.CO) project cancellations in the U.S. Northeast, to Tesla, Ford and GM’s scaled back EV manufacturing plans.

The darkening outlook for clean energy industries is tough news for Biden, whose pledge to deliver a net-zero economy by 2050 faces headwinds that the landmark Inflation Reduction Act’s billions in tax credits alone can’t resolve.

After walking into last year’s United Nations climate summit in Egypt touting the IRA as evidence of unprecedented progress in the fight against climate change, Biden is expected to skip this year’s event in Dubai amid dire warnings that the world is moving too slowly to avert the worst of global warming.

Read the full article at Reuters