Marine Renewables Legislation: Adaptive Management and Back to School

The Marine Renewables Promotion Act of 2009 has been included in the Senate energy bill. The bill which will be reconciled with the already-approved House bill and come up for a vote sometime this summer.

The Marine Renewables Promotion Act provisions authorize appropriations for several initiatives.  These include a marine renewables verification program and an adaptive management fund, which provides funding to companies for environmental studies and post-deployment monitoring at marine renewables project so long as developers put study results in the public domain.  The adaptive management fund would help get projects into the water quickly to learn more about impacts and make environmental information on marine renewables available to the public.

There are several other Senate-side proposals to fund marine renewables research programs at universities and laboratories. The Senate energy bill includes $750,000 worth of funding for the University of New Hampshire Center for Ocean Renewable Energy [Source: Fosters and Senator Patty Murray (D. Wash.) has introduced a bill to earmark $1.75 million in funding for the Marine Sciences Labroatory on Sequim Bay that will support oceanic wave and tidal power research. [Source: Peninsula Daily]. The Energy and Water Appropriations Act for FY 2010 contains five million dollars in federal funding for the National Deepwater Offshore Research Center at the University of Maine which will focus on offshore wind development [Source: NA Windpower.com.

Meanwhile, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth recently received $950,000 from the Department of Energy to develop energy technologies for offshore wind, waves and tides. [Source: Boston.com].