Saving Seafood

Inflation crippling wind energy despite Biden climate law, turbine giant says

January 17, 2023 — A leading wind turbine maker is imploring Washington and state governments for more policy support only months after Congress passed hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for green energy, arguing the new law alone is insufficient to help the industry reckon with high inflation.

The ask from Spanish manufacturer Siemens Gamesa illustrates how the persistence of inflation poses a threat to the decarbonization goals of President Joe Biden, who is now ill-equipped to pass new policy to supplement the new Democratic climate law with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives.

Siemens Gamesa said the Inflation Reduction Act, which the unified Democratic government passed in August, provided strong incentives and sends positive signals to the industry but is not a “silver bullet” due to the lasting and limiting effects that inflation is having on new investment.

Read the full article at the Washington Examiner

Oceans surged to another record-high temperature in 2022

January 13, 2023 — The amount of excess heat buried in the planet’s oceans, a strong marker of climate change, reached a record high in 2022, reflecting more stored heat energy than in any year since reliable measurements were available in the late 1950s, a group of scientists reported Wednesday.

That eclipses the ocean heat record set in 2021 — which eclipsed the record set in 2020, which eclipsed the one set in 2019. And it helps to explain a seemingly ever-escalating pattern of extreme weather events of late, many of which are drawing extra fuel from the energy they pull from the oceans.

“If we keep breaking records, it’s kind of like a broken record,” said John Abraham, a climate researcher at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and one of the authors of the new research published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Read the full article at the Washington Post

CALIFORNIA: California moves ahead with plans for floating wind turbines miles off its coastline

January 10, 2023 — The following transcript is from an NPR interview:

California is charging ahead with plans for floating wind turbines miles off its coastline. A federal lease auction took place last month, a first for the state. The future turbines will generate enough wind to power 1.5 million homes. From member station KQED, Kevin Stark reports.

KEVIN STARK, BYLINE: California’s coast – rocky bluffs running into green-black water and a completely empty horizon.

(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)

STARK: In the coming years, about 20 miles off the coast, state plans for two clusters of wind turbines on floating platforms. For the Biden administration, it’s a cornerstone of its ambitious climate plan. For Jeff Hunerlach, it means jobs for his members.

Read the full transcript at Knau

High temps linked to vanishing snow crabs in Bering Sea

January 9, 2023 — An increase in temperature changes in the Bering Sea is linked to the decline of snow crabs, according to ongoing studies from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Snow crabs are highly stenothermic — only equipped to survive across a narrow range of cold water temperatures. According to NOAA, the species thrive best in waters of temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius and below.

From 2018 to 2019, the administration recorded Bering Sea temperatures at over 3 degrees Celsius. The water temperature spiked from 1.52 degrees in 2017 to 3.5 degrees in 2018. The following year, the warm waters remained with an average temperature of 3.33 degrees, roughly two degrees higher than the recorded average seen over the past two decades.

“In those two years, 2018 and 2019, the Bering Sea was very warm,” Ben Daly, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said.

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Fishermen facing climate change: crab crashes and wind power threats

January 9, 2023 — Five thousand miles apart on their own oceans, New England trawlers and Alaska crabbers say they are up against twin threats from climate change: warming waters changing the marine environment, and hasty, risk-filled decisions in response from U.S. policy makers.

“I’m not sure which is going to get me first, climate change or the solution to it,” said Chris Brown, a Point Judith, R.I., captain, president of the Seafood Harvesters of America and a 2022 National Fisherman Highliner.

Brown expressed a general consensus among panelists during a Jan. 5 online webinar hosted by Fishery Friendly Climate Action, an initiative campaign that is organizing fishermen and industry groups to “advocate for robust climate solutions that work for U.S. fisheries and not at their expense,” as coordinator Sarah Schumann says.

“These issues are moving so fast,” said Schumann. “We as an industry have to improve our game.”

A series of winter webinars organized by Schumann aims to bring in fishermen from all U.S. regions to work together on climate issues. The collapse of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow and king crab fisheries –  a potential $500 million loss to the industry and dependent communities –  has snapped the issue into sharp focus.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: DMR scientist to address climate change challenges in nearshore waters

January 5, 2022 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources’ (DMR) Public Health Bureau has hired Meredith White, Ph.D., to lead a department program that supports coastal municipalities and harvesters as they confront climate change in Maine’s nearshore waters.

White’s hiring coincides with a recent name change that more accurately reflects the work of what was previously called the Shellfish Management Program and is now called the Nearshore Marine Resources Program.

“This program has evolved over time to include far more than just the management of softshell clams,” said DMR Public Health Bureau Director Kohl Kanwit. “Scientists in this program manage all species of clams, oysters, and mussels as well as other important species including seaweed, marine worms, periwinkles, and whelks. The change in name better encompasses all the existing responsibilities of this program.”

“This new senior scientist position and two supporting scientist positions were created by the administration and legislature to address new and dynamic challenges confronting municipalities and harvesters caused by climate change,” said Kanwit.

Read the full article at Boothbay Register

New funding to study shifting surf clams, potential fishing devaluation from offshore wind

January 4, 2022 — An effort to map changing surf clam habitat off the East Coast is among four new research projects to be funded in 2023 with $235,000 from the non-profit Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS).

SCEMFIS approved the funding at annual fall meeting, doling out an overall $109,000 increase in funding from the $126,000 the center approved for the 2022 funding year.

Projects are chosen for funding by members of the Center’s Industry Advisory Board, and with an eye to addressing the highest priorities in finfish and shellfish science. This year’s projects research new methods to chart the habitat overlap between ocean quahogs and surfclams; test better ways to analyze the diets of important predator species in the Gulf of Mexico; examine the financial impact of wind farm development on Northeast fisheries; and design a new, experimental clam dredge.

Clam resource distribution, a GIS summary: As the waters off the U.S. coast continue to warm, surf clams continue to move into deeper, formerly colder waters, causing an overlap in habitat with ocean quahogs, creating a problem for fishermen and regulators as two formerly separate fisheries begin to overlap.

This project funded at $19,719 and led by professor Roger Mann at the Virginia Institute for Marine Science, will develop GIS information charting this overlap using historical survey and fishing data, use temperature data to determine the influence of climate change over time, and use these data sets to project future surf clam migration.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Offshore wind in 2022: Billions in bids and new confidence

December 28, 2022 — Offshore wind advanced at a dizzying pace in 2022, from billion-dollar bids in New York to turbine installation vessels arriving in New England waters.

The landmark year buoyed confidence in investment in the U.S. market and saw the expansion of federal tax benefits — along with an increased government workforce — to support wind growth. Insiders continued to express confidence in the industry despite looming economic headwinds that threaten to slow the pace of President Joe Biden’s wind boom in the years ahead.

The White House’s commitment to raising turbines in the ocean, to reach a 30-gigawatt target by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes, fueled much of the growth seen over the last 12 months.

In February, energy companies pledged $4.4 billion for wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, the largest offshore energy sale in U.S. history.

The Biden administration would go on to hold its first auction in the Pacific Ocean and commit to raising 15 GW of floating offshore wind, a developing technology that’s needed to build wind farms in deep water.

“The momentum continues for the offshore wind sector,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association. “The government has done a good job of keeping things moving at a reasonable pace.”

New financial certainty also came from Congress, which expanded incentives to underwrite offshore wind investments and provided benefits for manufacturers of components like turbines and blades, and turbine installation vessels. As the year neared its close, turbine installation vessels arrived in northern waters to begin construction on the first large-scale projects in the country off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

It’s a growth story only dampened by the specter of inflationary costs from the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian war against Ukraine that have begun to bleed into development forecasts. The high price of steel and supply chain problems could pose threats as companies scramble to quickly launch projects.

Inflationary costs are not a unique problem for offshore wind. They are mirrored across the energy industries, noted Michelle Solomon, who tracks electricity trends for Energy Innovation Policy & Technology LLC, a nonpartisan think tank that supports the energy transition.

But there is a “concerning” possibility that inflation and supply chain issues can slow down the offshore wind build-out in the United States at a time when climate targets demand an even faster pace of renewable deployment, she said.

This month an offshore wind developer asked Massachusetts if it could bow out of contracts with utilities, citing higher costs that have put the project underwater without a different deal, while other large developers like Ørsted A/S and the Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. have been frank about their concerns about prices undermining project timelines (Energywire, Nov. 15).

The pressure is also at an all-time high for the Biden administration’s offshore wind bureau, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, to meet lofty clean energy targets. Despite a breakneck speed, the bureau needs to approve more than a dozen offshore wind arrays in under two years (Energywire, Dec. 1).

Still, these pressing challenges follow a pivotal year in offshore wind that’s increased confidence that the industry has cemented its position in the U.S. Here are four takeaways of how the sector shifted in 2022 that shed light on where it’s going.

Read the full article at E&E News

US lawmakers pursuing national compensation plan for offshore wind impacts

December 23, 2022 — Two federal lawmakers from the U.S. state of Massachusetts have announced an effort to create a national policy that ensures fishermen are compensated for the impact offshore wind developments will have on their livelihoods.

U.S. Senator Ed Markey and U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, both Democrats, said Thursday, 22 December, they’re working on a discussion draft of legislation that would ensure just compensation for fishermen, with funding distributed based on wind farm projects in their regions. In doing this, they plan to bring together officials from NOAA, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and stakeholders from involved industries and academia to determine the best process to determine and distribute funding.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Wind developers’ tightening financials call New England project into question

December 23, 2022 — Developers of the 1,223-megawatt Commonwealth Wind offshore wind project are asking Massachusetts energy regulators to cancel their review of power purchase agreements, saying the contracts and changing world economic conditions make the project no longer viable.

Developers Avangrid have cited the war in Ukraine, interest rates, supply chain constraints, and persistent inflation – plus the escalating cost of wind turbines – for upending their cost projections and ability to finance the project.

Since Avangrid made its initial requests to renegotiate, electric power distributors Eversource Energy, National Grid and Unitil have refused to budge. Avangrid submitted its request to cancel the power contracts review Dec. 16, and said it plans to resubmit a bid into the Massachusetts power solicitation process in April 2023.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource