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Maine lobster still on the menu at White House

December 3, 2022 — U.S. diplomacy is trumping environmental activism today when it comes to Maine lobster, with 200 of the Pine State’s signature seafood on the Thursday dinner menu for French president Emmanuel Macron’s visit with President Biden.

News reports on the menu for dinner at the White House described butter-poached Maine lobster as the opener before beef with shallot marmalade and triple-cooked butter potatoes.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

 

Threat of rail strike recedes as US Congress intervenes

December 3, 2022 — The U.S. Senate joined the U.S. House in voting to intervene to prevent a nationwide strike by railroad workers.

The Senate bill, which passed 80-15, was signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden on 2 December. Food industry and retail groups had urged Congress to pass the resolution to avert the strike, which was estimated to potentially cost the American economy up to USD 2 billion (EUR 1.9 billion) a day.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Dem lawmaker criticizes Biden for ritzy White House state dinner serving ‘200 Maine lobsters’

December 1, 2022 — A Democratic lawmaker is pushing back on President Biden’s pompous White House celebration, where 200 live lobsters will be served for guests Thursday during a state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The night before the dinner, where guests are expected to enjoy lobster and caviar, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, took to Twitter to urge Biden to meet with the lobstermen his administration is “currently regulating out of business.”

“If the Biden White House can prioritize purchasing 200 Maine lobsters for a fancy dinner, [Biden] should also take the time to meet with the Maine lobstermen his administration is currently regulating out of business,” Golden said in a tweet.

The red, white and blue-themed dinner with Macron, France’s first lady Brigitte Macron, and others will be the first state visit Biden has allowed at the White House since 2021 as other events were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Golden’s tweet is his latest call on Biden to uphold his promises to protect Maine’s lobster industry, especially amid a new dispute with whale conservationists.

The Maine lawmaker released a statement in October saying Biden broke his promise to Maine lobstermen.

“In 2020, while running for president, Biden pledged ‘I will work to protect the livelihood and safety of the fishing community’ in reference to lobstermen. He has yet to take a single action to make good on that pledge,” Golden said.

Read the full article at Fox News

Jared Golden rips Biden for ‘fancy’ Emmanuel Macron lobster dinner

December 1, 2022 — A Maine Democratic lawmaker gave President Biden a verbal pinch for shipping in 200 lobsters to serve at Thursday’s White House state dinner — amid a fierce debate over how the state’s fishing industry should be regulated.

After it emerged that butter-poached Maine lobster would be on the menu for Biden’s White House meal with French President Emmanuel Macron, Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) took aim at the ritzy celebration.

“If the Biden White House can prioritize purchasing 200 Maine lobsters for a fancy dinner, @POTUS should also take the time to meet with the Maine lobstermen his administration is currently regulating out of business,” Golden tweeted late Wednesday.

Read the full articles at New York Post

Control of US Congress remains in the balance as election results filter in

November 9, 2022 — Results from the U.S. election on Tuesday, 8 November are still being tallied, with control of Congress at stake.

Predictions of a Republican sweep of the midterm elections, seen in part as a referendum on U.S. President Joe Biden and Democratic leadership of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, did not materialize in early results.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW JERSEY: No deal on offshore power grid

October 27, 2022 — A state agency held off, at least for now, approving projects aimed at bringing power from offshore wind farms to land, but it did allow for $1 billion to upgrade the existing power grid.

The Board of Public Utilities balked at the more expensive projects needed to begin building what is essentially a backbone transmission system off the coast to deliver power ashore. Instead, it opted to wait until federal financial incentives are available to defray the costs to utility customers.

A law signed by President Joe Biden this summer provides lucrative tax credits to operators of offshore wind farms, but those credits are not available to most transmission projects. Several developers had sought approval from the state to build offshore transmission lines from the wind farms to the grid.

Many clean-energy advocates contend a backbone offshore wind transmission system is the most cost-effective and least environmentally disruptive way of connecting offshore power to the customers who need it. By midcentury, offshore wind farms are supposed to provide 27% of the state’s electricity. No offshore wind farm is operating in New Jersey.

Read the full article at New Jersey Spotlight News

Gulf shrimpers brace for offshore wind

August 25, 2022 — Trae Cooper risks punctures to the fiberglass hull of his grandfather’s boat every time he pulls out into the gray waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Trawling for shrimp that swim along Louisiana’s muddy coast means coexisting with the forgotten pipelines, corroded steel, gnawed plastic and bits of iron that the oil industry left behind as it marched gradually through these marshes and out to sea.

And that’s why Cooper, 39, and many shrimpers in the region say they know enough to worry as a new industry crops up in the Gulf of Mexico: offshore wind.

They wonder if transmission lines will add to the dangers that shrimpers and other commercial fishers already have to dodge, if turbines will take away places they could be shrimping, and if its planning will be done with shrimpers’ input taken seriously.

“If you got a whole field of wind turbines, you may knock out 2 miles of our fishing grounds. That’s a problem, not mentioning the transmission and everything that goes into it,” Cooper said.

Offshore wind appears imminent in the Gulf, one branch of President Joe Biden’s push to lift 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, helping to decarbonize the nation’s electricity grid in a fight against climate change. The administration is planning a first Gulf offshore wind auction by early next year, after finishing an environmental review of the industry’s impacts — including to marine life and fisheries.

Read the full story at E&E News

Gulf oil industry embraces offshore wind — to a point

August 23, 2022 — The Gulf of Mexico offshore oil industry will be critical in helping its frequent nemesis President Joe Biden achieve one of his most obtainable climate ambitions: raising wind farms in the ocean.

Welders and machinists from Louisiana and Texas are building the nation’s first offshore wind supply vessels and turbine installation ships. Jack-up vessel crews helped plant the first of thousands of turbines in the Atlantic Ocean and hope to raise more. Oil companies, with their decades of experience launching projects at sea, are expected to be at the front of the line when the Interior Department conducts the first lease sale for wind in the Gulf of Mexico next year.

But locals in the ports across south Louisiana are quick to point out the region isn’t ready to ditch its rigs. If anything, the embrace of offshore wind showcases a Gulf oil sector that remains mostly confident in the face of the energy transition.

“When wind energy comes to Louisiana, I think Louisiana will open their arms and say, ‘Yeah, come on, let’s do it,’” said Tommy Brown with Aries Marine Corp., one of the oil services companies that supplied lift boats and operators that helped build the first offshore wind farm in the country in Rhode Island in 2015. “[But] people need to understand that, look, you can’t just flip a switch and go from oil and gas to renewables.”

That sentiment is common across the Gulf Coast. The region demonstrates perhaps more than anywhere else in the country the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry, even as the Biden administration tries to drive an energy transformation that includes a commitment to approve 16 offshore wind arrays by 2030 to help decarbonize the grid by 2035.

In Louisiana, offshore wind could provide new jobs for workers laid off by an oil sector that becomes more efficient through each price bust, and it is poised to inject adrenaline into the shipbuilding industry. Long term, wind may even become a strong, albeit smaller, industry with its own workforce of wind technicians and manufacturers along the Gulf Coast, pushing clean power onto the grid.

Read the full story at E&E News

Southern New England commercial fishing industry response to Biden climate speech: Climate action must support ocean ecosystems and resource-dependent communities

July 25, 2022 — The following was released by the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership, Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, and Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island:

Speaking from a podium at the former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset on Wednesday, President Biden appropriately described climate change as a clear and present danger that puts the health of U.S. citizens and communities at stake. But his proposed slate of solutions, largely focused on further expansion of offshore wind energy on the continental shelf, fell short of the ambition needed to address the problem and may actually endanger coastal communities more than climate change alone would do.

The Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishing families and seafood businesses that our organizations represent are experiencing the effects of warming waters and increased storminess firsthand, and there is no doubt that robust climate action is needed to sustain local marine ecosystems, shore up our combined states’ $3.7 billion in annual seafood sales, safeguard our 81,000 fishing-dependent jobs, and preserve our members’ ability to supply the public with fresh, high-quality wild fish and shellfish. But although our organizations are broadly supportive of meaningful action to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we are dismayed at the president’s narrow focus on fast-tracking and scaling up industrial offshore wind, which is one of the most ecologically invasive forms of renewable energy available.

Since taking office, the Biden administration has willfully ignored the concerns of fishermen and fisheries managers about industrial offshore wind development, and the President’s recent speech perpetuates a delusion that offshore wind energy is environmentally benign. For example, while showcasing the Brayton Point location’s conversion from a coal-fired power plant to an offshore wind manufacturing and staging facility, the President cheerfully described the miles of subsea cable and the 2,500-ton steel foundations that will be produced at locations like this one. But he made no mention of the electromagnetic fields that these cables will emit once they are placed underwater, the massive amounts of copper that will need to be mined in order to manufacture these cables, or the disruptive underwater noise and vibrations that will be created by pounding thousands of these foundations into the seafloor.

Similarly, the President’s speech touted new jobs that will be created by the wind industry but said nothing of the existing fishing jobs that will be put at risk by displacement from fishing grounds, increased safety risks and insurance costs, and uncertainty about the future of fishery resources.

Across the U.S., fishing communities have called for stronger environmental review of offshore wind proposals, including thorough programmatic environmental impact statements to be carried out prior to any wind farm leasing or permitting in an area. Unfortunately, President Biden’s recent remarks suggest that these concerns continue to fall on deaf ears.

Announcing that “the ocean is open for the clean energy of our future,” the President vowed to “clear every federal hurdle and streamline federal permitting that brings these clean energy projects online right now and right away.” In our view, federal permitting processes for industrial development on the continental shelf should be made more stringent, not easier to clear, and the timeline for development should not be sped up but slowed down, in order to allow for comprehensive impacts assessment and adaptive management. The unknowable dangers that ocean industrialization poses not only to commercially valuable fish but also to marine mammals, physical oceanography, avian species, and the entire marine food web are serious and must be confronted before development can proceed.

In the next few weeks, President Biden is expected to roll out a series of executive actions aiming to fill the gap left by Congress’ failure to enact much-needed climate legislation. As he prepares these actions, we call upon the President to redirect the emphasis of his proposals towards the vast array of available fishery friendly climate solutions that are available and to prioritize those that: provide environmental co-benefits by sequestering carbon along the coastline, support small-scale energy production that puts dollars back into local communities instead of shipping it offshore, avoid industrial sprawl by leveraging the already-built environment, and prioritize energy efficiency and demand reduction to diminish the total amount of energy production required. Meanwhile, we insist that any offshore wind development that does take place must be consistent with the stepwise harm reduction approach embodied in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which guides developers to (1) avoid, (2) minimize, (3) rectify, (4) reduce, and (5) compensate those affected for any impacts, in that order, with full transparency and participation by affected fishing interests.

In closing, we comment that the Brayton Point power plant site is deeply symbolic of the environmental short-sightedness that often accompanies energy development. From the 1960s to the 2000s, heated discharge water from this plant containing chlorine and other deadly chemicals decimated the winter flounder resource that once supported year-round fisheries in Mount Hope Bay and Narragansett Bay. As happens all too frequently, fishermen’s concerns about the plant’s environmental impacts were ignored until it was too late.

Future energy development must avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. We call upon elected leaders to address the climate crisis hand-in-hand with affected communities in ways that work for local environments and existing industries, not at their expense.

Biden pushes for Gulf of Mexico wind power

July 25, 2022 — Nearly 1,150 square miles in the western Gulf of Mexico are proposed for offshore wind energy areas, as President Biden said he would do everything within his executive powers to act on climate issues and developing cleaner energy.

The cumulative effect of climate change “is definitely a clear and present danger,” Biden said at Brayton Point in Somerset, Mass., where the old generating site is being redeveloped to manufacture power cables for wind projects off southern New England.

“We see it in America, in red states and blue states,” said Biden, “seeing 100-year droughts happening every few years” and massive damage from hurricanes. “This is an emergency and I’ll look at it that way.”

“Today Brayton Point is on the frontier of clean energy,” he said. In a speech peppered with references to construction jobs, shipbuilding and new manufacturing, he called the site on example of future economic opportunity.

“When I think clean energy, I think jobs,” said Biden.

Timed with Biden’s address, yesterday the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced it was seeking public input on the identification of two potential WEAs in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

Read the full article at National Fisherman

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