Ocean climate bill promotes offshore wind, conservation; prime for after election

Ocean climate bill promotes offshore wind, conservation; prime for after election

By Jason Huffman

US commercial seafood harvesters already worried about the onset of wind farms off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have good reason to sweat a bit more over the ocean climate change bill introduced Tuesday, believes Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA).

The "Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act", sponsored by US representative Raul Grijalva, chairman of the House’s Natural Resources Committee, would prohibit the leasing of all areas of the outer continental shelf (OCS) for oil and gas drilling, but it would also direct the US interior secretary to "seek to permit not less than 12.5 gigawatts of offshore wind energy production on the OCS by Jan. 1, 2025", based on a 19-page summary of the 300-page bill, a copy of which was shared with Undercurrent News.

The goal would double to 225 GW by Jan. 1, 2030.

Also, the Department of Interior (DOI) would be required to submit an annual report to Congress detailing its progress toward the windfarm targets. And this along with an initiative that would lead to 30% of US waters being placed under conservation and protected from commercial fishing.

"The fishing industry is facing a lot of challenges right now," said Hawkins, whose group reports to represent 160 harvesters and processors in nine states and 30 different fisheries.

"Our fish stocks are recovering and [harvesters] have been promised returns on that. The fishery management process relies on sound science, surveys, assessments and sustainable harvest quotas, and it's very difficult to tell how things like huge national offshore wind goals and 30 by 30 line up with fishery management principles and fishery science."

"Offshore energy" is just one of the 15 titles contained in Grijalva's bill, which debuted during an hour-long online press conference Tuesday. It also includes titles dedicated to blue carbon ecosystems, marine-protected areas, climate-ready fisheries and strengthening marine mammal conservation, to name a few.


"The oceans have absorbed 93% of the heat trapped by climate change, making them hotter and more acidic," Grijalva said in a press release announcing the bill. "At the same time, up to 21% of the annual greenhouse gas emissions cuts the world needs can come from the oceans. The bill is a first-of-its-kind effort to stop the ongoing damage to our oceans and protect the food, jobs and coastlines on which millions of people depend."

The press event featured more than a dozen speakers, including John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress and a former advisor to both presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.


"Climate change is threatening the ocean’s ability to sustain us," he said. "From dying coral reefs to disappearing fish, coastal communities across the country are struggling to survive in the face of a hotter, more acidic, and stormier ocean. Yet for far too long, the ocean has been left out of conversations about climate solutions."

Others also praised the bill.

“this is the bill we have been waiting for,” Jane Lubchenco, a professor at Oregon State University and the former administration of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said. “It draws on the latest science to tap the treasure-trove of ocean solutions to accelerate progress on climate change. The outcome? People win, the economy wins, nature wins.”

'[A] lot is going to depend on who is in charge in the Senate'

The ocean climate bill, which had yet to receive an official number on Wednesday, has 12 co-sponsors, though all Democrats, and the support of at least 10 conservation groups, including Earthjustice, Environment America, Greenpeace USA, League of Conservation Voters, Oceana, Ocean Conservancy, Urban Ocean Lab, National Ocean Protection Coalition, National R Defense Council and the Surfrider Foundation.

But Grijalva, on Tuesday, seemed to be talking about any companion arising in the Senate not doing so until the next session. There are just months remaining in the 116th Congress, which is in the midst of a presidential election and facing multiple controversial issues, including providing relief for those struggling financially due to the coronavirus.


The bill’s chances soar significantly in the 117th Congress, should the Democrats win the White House, reclaim a majority in the Senate and also retain control of the House, where Grijalva can be expected to re-introduce the measure.


"[A] lot is going to depend on who is in charge in the Senate,” Grijalva said in response to a reporter’s question. “To be frank with you, I think we’re waiting to see what the results are going to be because that will shape who is the chair. That’ll shape the ability of this legislation to move quickly … The effort will be made. The willingness is another question."

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who chairs the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and also has co-sponsored the bill, added Tuesday that she has been in touch with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, "by letter and personal communications", but has not yet received a response.  

Grijalva said it was his understanding that there would be at least one hearing on the bill before the end of the session.

"The stakes are high. What are the chances of this passing? This election has got a lot to do with it," said representative Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat also seen as heavily invested in supporting the bill. "But in the House of Representatives, Democrats are united in the fact that we’ve got to look to the scientists and move as quickly as possible.”

Grijalva also suggested his bill could be bolstered by a greater focus on science in the next administration and congressional session as a backlash to the current administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.


"It is a consequential challenge that we face with climate change and I think the pandemic has put urgency behind us doing something, and I think something will be done," he said. "I think the public sentiment is such."


Additionally, some sources said, there's a chance that many of the measures contained in the Grijalva bill could be enacted as executive orders by Joe Biden should he be elected. 

Lowenthal: It's like Animal Farm
The commercial fishing industry on the New England coast of the US, in particular, has long been in a battle against efforts to build wind farms there. In particular, harvesters remain concerned about their ability to navigate the waters around turbines and the potential impact on local squid and other fish.

DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), in August, was reported to be reviewing more than 13,000 comments it received in response to a supplement to its draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind Project, a collection of about 80 giant turbines spread out over a 118-mile stretch of ocean nearest the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. A positive decision could open the door to many more windfarm approvals.

The wind farming industry didn’t expect to still be arguing about its project planned for the New England coast at this point. Construction on Vineyard Wind was previously expected to begin in 2019, with the farm becoming operational by early 2022. Other wind projects of similar size were expected to follow in seven lease areas also off the Atlantic Coast.

Representative Alan Lowenthal, a California Democrat who chairs the Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, accused the administration, during Tuesday’s press conference, of deliberately stalling on wind energy.

"This administration has an all-of-the-above policy but what it really translates into is Animal Farm. ’All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others’," he said, referring to the quote from the famous 1945 book by George Orwell. "They are permitting at a fast rate all oil and gas. We have been waiting now for 18 months for the first completion of offshore wind. They have slowed it down. They have thrown obstacles in the way."


However, it was a statement to which Hawkins took offense. She stressed that the administration’s delay was to evaluate the "cumulative impacts" that "the rapid proliferation" of wind farms could have on the commercial fishing industry.


"The chairman indicated today that the administration has ‘thrown obstacles in the way’ of approving the nation’s first proposed commercial-scale offshore wind energy facility," she said in an email to Undercurrent. "However, the fishing industry collectively still has real, as-yet unanswered concerns about the impacts of marine industrialization to the ocean resources and their operations.”

"…The provisions of this bill related to [marine protected areas], aquaculture, and other spatial uses represent additional huge challenges that must be aligned with fisheries management, science, and operational needs if we are to realize the benefit of our recovering fish stocks and maintain the viability of coastal economies,” she said.


In another recent development, senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Delaware Democrat, introduced “Opening Federal Financial Sharing to Heighten Opportunities for Renewable Energy (OFFSHORE) Act of 2020”, (S. 3485), a bill that would expand revenue sharing for states in wind farm projects. It has 19 cosponsors, including Republicans Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) and Roger Wicker (Mississippi).


RODA organized a letter signed by 50 representatives of seafood harvesters and their trade associations, to offer critical comments on the measure, suggesting in particular that research funds be provided to the National Marine Fisheries Service to study the impact of wind farms on various stocks. The letter was sent to the chairs and ranking members of both the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and its public lands, forests and mining subcommittee.

Grijalva’s bill goes much further.

"The Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act will help blow the wind into the sails of the American offshore wind industry," said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, in a press release issued Tuesday.


AWEA estimates that generating 30GW of offshore wind in the US by 2030 will produce 83,000 jobs and $25bn in annual economic output.

Bill doesn't recognize industry efforts
Also chief among the changes getting attention from the commercial fishing industry, as reported by Undercurrent, is the bill’s aim at leading the US to adopt a requirement that 30% of its waters be under conservation by 2030.

Grijalva’s bill would create a task force that would have one year to "develop a plan and schedule consistent with the policy of prohibiting any commercial extractive or destructive human activity on at least 30% of the ocean under United States jurisdiction by 2030.

Also, it would oblige the US to "support the adoption and implementation of a global goal to protect at least 30% of land and 30% of ocean areas by 2030 under the Convention on Biological Diversity.”

Counting the 442,781 square miles of ocean covered in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, located off the coast of Hawaii, declared by president Barrack Obama in 2016, the US currently maintains 23% of its federal waters under conservation, estimates Leigh Habegger, executive director of the Seafood Harvesters of America (SHA). However, president Donald Trump, in June, promised to open the area for commercial fishing.

The pledge came at the same time that he issued a proclamation that reversed part of Obama’s 2016 order to designate a nearly 5,000 square mile section of the Atlantic Ocean as a national monument, re-opening the area to commercial fishing.


Habegger said she could not estimate what percentage of federal waters would be under conservation protection should a Joe Biden administration restore the commercial fishing ban declared by Obama and eliminated by Trump in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a triangular space about 150 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.


Habegger said Wednesday that her group has yet to establish a position on Grijalva’s bill.


"We are still reviewing the whole bill," she said in an email. "However, it is important to recognize that the industry has been working towards various types of protections for decades using the [regional councils/Magnuson Stevens Act] process to improve conservation. In doing so, we've produced the most sustainable fisheries in the world. Yet, none of those protected areas established by science and a stakeholder-driven process appear to be counted under the bill because they don't qualify as highly or fully protected areas.

“So it is frustrating to industry that the bill’s 30x30 provisions don’t recognize the industry’s significant efforts.”

Other measures
Grijalva’s bill has a few other measures, too, that would be of interest to commercial harvesters, including several changes that some might favor.


It would require government agencies that purchase seafood to prioritize fish or shellfish harvested in the US in a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. It would provide the commerce secretary with funds for grants to promote the consumption of local or domestic and environmentally or climate-friendly seafood, or from well-managed but less known species.

The legislation would direct federal trade negotiators to include, "among their ‘priority objectives’, the elimination of subsidies that contribute to excess fishing capacity, overfishing, or illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.”


It would prohibit federal loan guarantees for fishing vessels that aren’t made in a way that increases fuel efficiency or reduces fuel usage. It would instruct the Department of Commerce to identify, develop and implement strategies to improve the management of fisheries in a way that addresses climate change.


The bill would have Commerce also establish a program to promote aquaculture that "maximizes ecosystem benefits and minimizes negative impacts in US coastal waters and the EEZ.”

The legislation would amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act to direct NOAA to develop climate impact management plans for marine mammals that are highly threatened by climate change.

newsLeigh Habegger