Zero Emission Marine Energy Slips Through Trump Chopper

Everybody is wondering who is really pulling the strings over at the White House when US President Donald Trump is out on the links. For that matter, who is pulling the strings even when Trump is present at the White House? Well, the answer is probably Trump. That’s the only way to explain his whackadoodle energy policy, which has suddenly pivoted to embrace marine energy as well as hydropower, geothermal, and biomass. Wait…whut?

That’s Marine Energy, As In Water

Trump swept into office on January 20 with a well-publicized plan to boost coal, oil, and gas production in the US. Somewhat less well-publicized was the idea of including three key renewable resources along with the fossils, but there they are. When Trump launched “American Energy Dominance” into being, the list of favored resources included hydropower, geothermal, and biomass, too.

Weird. All three renewables are capable of competing directly against coal and natural gas for baseload power generation, meaning the ability to generate electricity at a constant rate, 24/7. In particular, the US geothermal industry has finally broken free of its former geographical limitations, which makes things all the more interesting. To make things even more interesting, biomass is beginning to challenge fossil energy in the all-important area of aviation fuel.

None of this is good news for fossil energy stakeholders, and marine energy makes it even less good. The marine energy industry is a relatively new player on the global energy scene, and it has just barely begun to edge into the commercial market. However, it does check the “baseload” box. Marine energy refers to devices that transfer the endless kinetic energy of waves, tides, currents, and inland waterways into electricity.

More Marine Energy For The USA

Strictly speaking, the marine energy field does not include offshore wind farms or floating solar arrays, which is just as well. Here in the US, President Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the US wind and solar industries, assisted gleefully by the Republican majority in Congress along with Tesla CEO Elon Musk as the former head of Trump’s “DOGE” budget-cutting office.

Marine energy, somehow, has lived to see another day. “The power coursing through oceans and rivers equates to nearly 60% of the United States’ total electricity needs,” the Energy Department enthuses on its Marine Energy Program landing page.

“Even if only a small portion of this technical resource potential is captured, marine energy could make significant contributions to the nation’s energy needs and provide millions of Americans with locally sourced, clean, and reliable energy,” they add.

“Marine energy also offers opportunities to provide clean energy to remote and island communities and to leverage the ocean to power blue economy applications such as ocean observation technology or desalination and water treatment devices,” the Energy Department adds again for good measure.

US & Norway To Cooperate On Hydropower & Marine Energy, Too

I know what you’re thinking. The above link to the Marine Energy Program (“The power coursing through oceans and rivers”) must be an old link to an inactive program. Nope. It’s alive, as Dr. Frankenstein would say. The Energy Department emailed CleanTechnica on July 7 with a press release describing the agency’s newly expanded collaboration with Norway. The arrangement initially focused on hydropower and it has just branched out to include marine energy.

“The latest MOU Annex expands the scope of this collaboration to include marine energy, which has the potential to provide locally sourced energy to millions of Americans in the most densely populated regions of the country,” the Energy Department emphasized. Unless I was hallucinating, the link in the press release goes straight to the agency’s Marine Energy Program.

For the record, the energy collaboration with Norway goes back over 20 years, spanning the Bush presidency as well as Trump’s first term in office, in addition to the Obama administration. In its July 7 press release, the Energy Department included a link to a PDF of the original Memorandum of Understanding, dated May 23, 2004 and signed by representatives from the Energy Department and Norway’s Royal Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.

The MOU simply calls for collaboration on energy research, development, and demonstration covering fossil energy as well as renewable energy, energy efficiency, and “Other fields as the Parties may agree to in writing” for a period of five years, with additional five-year periods to follow as agreed. In 2020, the US and Norway outlined a hydropower annex to be included in the next five-year round. Now it’s 2025 and marine energy has been added to the pile.

It remains to be seen how far the Energy Department is willing to go with this marine energy thing. Still, Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s press statement was pretty emphatic.

“By signing this Memorandum of Understanding with Norway, we are building upon our two nations’ shared expertise and advanced marine energy technologies to support President Trump’s pro-growth energy agenda for the American people,” Wright enthused in a press stateent. He also used the occasion to give a shout-out to hydropower as a “tremendous resource” that “supports reliable, affordable power across the country and holds vast potential to bolster America’s grid.”

What’s The Matter With Wind & Solar?

Against this backdrop of renewable energy activity under the American Energy Dominance theme, Trump continues his vendetta against wind and solar power, but why? Who knows! Ask Trump. On July 7, the same day that saw Energy Secretary Wright wax poetic on the benefits of marine energy and hydropower, Trump issued an executive order reiterating his determination to squeeze the US wind and solar industries into a pulp, now that the new Republican tax bill has become law.

“For too long, the Federal Government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar,” reads the official missive from the White House.

“The proliferation of these projects displaces affordable, reliable, dispatchable domestic energy sources, compromises our electric grid, and denigrates the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape,” the missive goes on some more, skipping right over a long list of denigrations of the natural landscape by the coal mining industry, along with an equally long list attributed to the oil industry such as the Gulf oil spill and a whole stack of pipeline spills on land. Natural gas, of course, it also not off the hook when it comes to denigrating the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape.

Oh, well. In a little less than 3-1/2 years, Trump will leave office — peacefully this time, one hopes — without achieving anything more than a temporary slowdown in the decarbonization of the US economy.

Image: A newly announced collaboration between the US and Norway reveals that marine energy somehow made list of US President Trump’s preferred energy resources under the “American Energy Dominance” plan (courtesy of US National Renewable Energy Laboratory).