Saving Seafood

US Interior Department reverses legal opinion on offshore wind

April 16, 2021 — The U.S. Interior Department formally reversed a Trump-era legal opinion on offshore wind energy, in another step toward the Biden administration’s goal of dramatically expanding the industry in U.S. waters.

A memo from Robert Anderson, the department’s principle deputy solicitor, released on 9 April critiques and reverses findings written in December by Daniel Jorjani, who was the department’s top lawyer when then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt moved to shut down the approval process for the Vineyard Wind offshore project.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Biden wants 25 percent funding increase for NOAA

April 15, 2021 — U.S. President Joe Biden has called on Congress to give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a more than 25 percent increase in funding for the 2022 fiscal year.

In a letter to Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) on 9 April, Acting Director for the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young requested USD 6.9 billion (EUR 5.8 billion) for the agency. That’s USD 1.4 billion (EUR 1.2 billion) more than the agency received for this current budget year.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Biden banks on offshore wind to help curb climate change

April 13, 2021 — Two wind turbines, each as tall as the Washington Monument, stand sentinel 27 miles off the coast of Virginia, the nation’s first offshore wind installation in federal waters.

The pilot project began producing power last October but is just the beginning for an industry poised for massive growth over the next decade. Longtime conflicts with the fishing industry remain, as well as some landowners, but with the help of a major push from the Biden administration, offshore wind may finally advance in the Atlantic.

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s state utility, plans to install nearly 200 more ocean turbines east of Cape Henry over the next five years. And developers have permits pending for 10 more offshore wind projects along the East Coast, from North Carolina to Maine.

The Biden administration wants to buoy the industry. Last month, the administration announced a $3 billion plan to expand offshore wind.

The ambitious goal is to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, enough to power more than 10 million homes and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s roughly the carbon equivalent of taking 17 million cars off the road for a year.

Offshore wind represents an opportunity for the Biden administration to address two major goals: reducing carbon emissions and creating jobs.

“Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind,” National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in announcing the new plan.

The projects could support tens of thousands of jobs, from maintenance at sea to steel production far inland.

There is just one other offshore wind project currently online in the United States: five turbines in state waters off the coast of Block Island, R.I.

The industry has more proposals in the works, including:

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Laura Morton of the American Clean Power Association, an industry group. “We can provide clean energy, slash carbon emissions and create jobs.”

Read the full story at The Maine Beacon

Biden administration proposes record $6.9 billion budget for NOAA

April 13, 2021 — President Biden’s administration has proposed a budget increase for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would be the biggest in the agency’s history if approved by Congress.

The proposed budget would provide $6.9 billion in funding for the agency, a $1.4 billion increase from the budget enacted for 2021 and nearly $2.3 billion above the amount proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, or roughly 50 percent more.

The increase would infuse a massive amount of resources to support the agency, whose responsibilities include weather forecasting, climate research and services, ocean research, the health of the nation’s fisheries and protection of endangered marine species.

“These additional funds would allow NOAA to expand its climate observation and forecasting work and provide better data and information to decision-makers, support coastal resilience programs that would help protect communities from the economic and environmental impacts of climate change, and invest in modern infrastructure to enable these critical efforts,” according to the Biden administration’s budget document, released Friday.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Biden’s Big Bet On Offshore Wind

April 12, 2021 — The Biden administration recently announced a plan to substantially expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a huge new source of clean energy that is likely to gain widespread acceptance in the United States.

The bold bet would result in the generation of 30 gigawatts (GW) of wind power by 2030, enough to power over 10 million homes and cut 78 million metrics tons of CO2 emissions. Currently, the United States has only one offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island generating 30 megawatts (MW) — 1,000 MW are in one GW.

Offshore wind farming represents a significant opportunity for the creation of “green-collar” jobs, with maintenance and day-to-day operations requiring regular support. Yet, the more labor-intensive an energy-generating operation is, the more expensive the kilowatt of energy becomes. Offshore wind is currently the most expensive form of mainstream power generation available – more than 3x the cost of a combined cycle natural gas plant on a $/MWh basis – when all factors are considered (see chart below). The so called “levelized cost of electricity” or LCOE for offshore wind is climate and labor-market dependent, but the Energy Information Agency sees the regional weighted average LCOE of new offshore wind projects in 2040 dropping t0 65% of 2020 costs in ideal cases.

Read the full story at Forbes

Suit seeks to reverse Trump changes to sea turtle protection

April 7, 2021 — Conservation groups sued on Tuesday to reverse changes made under former President Donald Trump to rules protecting sea turtles, even though federal regulators said a week ago that they were reconsidering some of those changes.

The groups hope President Joe Biden’s administration will change the rules, but the possible revisions outlined recently may not go far enough, said Jaclyn Lopez of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three groups.

“We’re hopeful they will do something and do something soon, but we’re not going to sit back and wait,” she said. “This is decades in the making and our patience has run out.”

“We are aware of this filing and are reviewing it,” Allison Garrett, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries service, said in an email.

The current rule would hurt five endangered and threatened sea turtle species, especially Kemp’s ridleys, the smallest and most endangered, the groups’ news release said. Kemp’s ridleys swim throughout the Gulf and along the Atlantic Coast to New England, nesting in Mexico and along the Texas coast.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Alaskan fishing communities ask for seat at climate policy table

April 7, 2021 — Alaskan fishing organizations are urging the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to listen to coastal communities and fishermen while crafting an ecosystem-based approach to climate change and fisheries policy.

The message from Alaska fishing communities came through recent public comments hearing by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the new administration’s executive order on climate change.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The U.S. set ambitious offshore wind power targets – what will it take to meet them?

April 2, 2021 — The United States’ offshore wind industry is tiny, with just seven wind turbines operating off Rhode Island and Virginia. The few attempts to build large-scale wind farms like Europe’s have run into long delays, but that may be about to change.

The Biden administration announced on March 29, 2021, that it would accelerate the federal review process for offshore wind projects and provide more funding. It also set a goal: Develop 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity this decade – enough to power 10 million homes with clean energy. To put that in perspective, the U.S. has just 42 megawatts today.

Several wind farm developers already hold leases in prime locations off the Eastern Seaboard, suggesting plenty of interest. So, will the government’s new goals and promise of additional funding be enough to finally launch a thriving offshore wind industry?

As engineering professors leading the Energy Transition Initiative and Wind Energy Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we have been closely watching the industry’s challenges and progress. The process could move quickly once permitting and approvals are on track, but there are still obstacles.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Biden Plan To Conserve More Ocean Habitat Worries Hawaii Fishing Interests

April 1, 2021 — Days after taking office, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping new executive order to conserve 30% of the nation’s total land area and 30% of all waters it controls by 2030.

It’s not yet known how the so-called “30 by 30” plan — a bold if daunting goal to protect more of the planet’s natural environment and biodiversity — will affect Hawaii and U.S. Pacific territories. The report on how to even approach the conservation target isn’t supposed to be done for another 30 days or so.

Nonetheless, commercial U.S. fishing interests across the Pacific are already watching closely, and members of the council that oversees those interests bristled last week at the idea of expanding the vast ocean region’s protected areas.

That group, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, is eager to learn more about the Biden order, dubbed “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”

It wants to know exactly what defines “conservation” under the Biden 30 by 30 plan — and whether it would lead to more no-fish zones such as the one within one of the largest conservation area on earth: the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which encompasses the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Biden administration aims for vast offshore wind expansion

March 30, 2021 — Top Biden administration officials on Monday outlined new goals for building 30,000 megawatts off offshore wind energy generation by 2030, including another wind energy area covering nearly 800,000 acres in the New York Bight.

The Bureau of Offshore Energy Management announced it will initiate its environmental impact statement process for the Ocean Wind project, Ørsted’s planned 1,100 MW array off New Jersey, as the agency recently started an EIS for the South Fork wind development south of Rhode Island and just weeks after finalizing its analysis for the 804 MW Vineyard Wind project in southern New England waters.

Environmental reviews could start for as many as 10 more projects this year, the agency said.

The waters between the New Jersey beaches and Long Island already include federal lease held by developers intending to build the Atlantic Shores turbine array off Atlantic City, and the Empire Wind project close to the New York Harbor approaches. BOEM has been gauging potential developer interest in areas farther offshore and said it will now begin an environmental assessment of those areas.

With 20 million inhabitants in the region, it’s “the largest population center in the United States” with an enormous energy market, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who spoke of the opportunity for U.S. shipbuilders and other industries in a new energy sector.

Read the full story at National Fisherman