Joe Biden News

The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a plan to sell offshore wind leases in waters off the coasts of Maine and Oregon later this year, saying projects in those regions could one day power a total of 6 million homes.The proposed sales are part of a five-year schedule of offshore wind auctions the Interior Department outlined last week. Putting wind turbines along every U.S. coastline is a cornerstone of President Joe Biden's agenda to decarbonize the electricity grid and combat climate change.In a statement…

The U.S. military's cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter."The cost has not just risen.

A Commissioner with the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission is urging President Joe Biden to provide aid for local companies and workers suffering from an economic upheaval in the wake of the tragic Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore.A letter sent by Commissioner Carl W. Bentzel to President Biden on Monday asks the President to consider using the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) as a model for providing relief workers and industries affected by the temporary…

U.S. troops have begun construction of a maritime pier off the coast of Gaza that aims to speed the flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave when it becomes operational in May, the Pentagon said on Thursday.President Joe Biden announced the pier in March as aid officials implored Israel to ease access for relief supplies into Gaza over land routes. Whether the pier will ultimately succeed in boosting humanitarian aid is unclear, as international officials warn of the risk of…

President Joe Biden's administration unveiled plans on Wednesday to hold up to a dozen auctions of offshore wind development rights through 2028, including four before the end of this year.The schedule will help companies, states and others plan for projects that require massive amounts of investment and infrastructure, the Interior Department said in a statement."Our offshore wind leasing schedule will provide predictability to help developers and communities plan ahead and will…

New York State on Friday stalled three major offshore wind-energy projects after General Electric Vernova GE.N changed the turbine design, which the state said "materially altered" the plans.New York provisionally approved the projects in October 2023. They are Attentive Energy One being developed by TotalEnergies, Rise Light & Power and Corio Generation; Community Offshore Wind, which is backed by RWE and National Grid Ventures; and Vineyard Offshore's Excelsior Wind.But since then…

Venezuela's loss of a key U.S. license that allowed it to freely export and increase investment in its oil sector will hit the volume and quality of its crude and fuel sales while prompting a flurry of requests for individual U.S deal authorizations.U.S. officials had warned that absent progress by President Nicolas Maduro on implementing an electoral roadmap agreed last year, the U.S. would not renew license 44, which since October had eased oil sanctions in place for the last five years.On Wednesday…

The United States has launched an investigation into alleged unfair practices within China's shipbuilding and maritime industries, drawing ire from Chinese officials.The probe was launched Wednesday by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in response to a petition filed by five national labor unions accusing China of using "non-market policies that are far more aggressive and interventionist than any other country" to obtain dominance over the global shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sector."The American commercial shipbuilding industry is a shell of its former self. . .

The Biden administration said it would not renew a license set to expire early on Thursday that had broadly eased Venezuela oil sanctions, moving to reimpose punitive measures in response to President Nicolas Maduro’s failure to meet his election commitments.Just hours before the deadline, the U.S. Treasury Department announced on its website that it had issued a replacement license giving companies 45 days to “wind down” their business and transactions in the OPEC country's oil…

A fabricated image of characters from the animated television series The Simpsons viewing a collapsed bridge and a large ship has been widely shared on social media with the false suggestion that the show predicted the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.The image shows signs of having been made with AI and an executive producer for the series told Reuters that the image is fake as the show never had an episode where a container ship hits a bridge.The Francis Key Scott bridge…

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday it expects to open a new channel to the Port of Baltimore by the end of April, freeing up commercial shipping blocked by a collapsed bridge, and then restore port access to full capacity by the end of May.The main channel has been blocked by wreckage since the fully loaded container ship Dali lost power and rammed into a support column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, killing six road workers and causing the highway bridge to tumble into the Patapsco River.The Army Corps…

Recovery teams opened a second channel enabling smaller vessels to navigate the Port of Baltimore on Tuesday but most commercial shipping remains blocked by the collapsed bridge and stranded container ship that brought the structure down a week ago.A team including the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state of Maryland announced crews had cleared a channel with a depth of 14 feet (4.3 meters), similar to the 11-foot channel opened on the opposite side of…

The U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday approved the country's eighth commercial-scale offshore wind project, which will be built off the coast of Massachusetts, bringing online electricity to power more than 900,000 homes.The approval for Avangrid’s New England Wind Project brings the U.S. one-third of the way to President Joe Biden's goal of permitting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030—a key part of the president's climate change agenda.The project comes just a week after the Interior Department approved another offshore wind project, Orsted's Sunrise Wind, in New York.

The U.S. state of Maryland has opened a temporary channel on the northbound side of the collapsed Baltimore bridge, allowing limited tug and barge traffic around the container ship stuck at the disaster site, Governor Wes Moore said on Monday."It will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse," Moore told a news conference.The Port of Baltimore's shipping channel has been blocked since a fully loaded container ship lost power and collided with a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge last Tuesday…

Salvage crews worked to lift the first piece of Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge from the water on Saturday to allow barges and tugboats to access the disaster site, Maryland and U.S. officials said, the first step in a complex effort to reopen the city's blocked port.The steel truss bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning, killing six road workers, when a massive container ship lost power and crashed into a support pylon. Much of the span crashed into the Patapsco River…

With efforts underway to clean up thousands of tons of steel debris from the collapsed bridge in Baltimore's harbor, Maryland Governor Wes Moore on Sunday urged Republicans to work with Democrats to approve the federal funding needed for rebuilding the bridge and to get the port economy back on its feet.Baltimore's Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning, killing six road workers, when a container ship nearly the size of the Eiffel Tower lost power and crashed into a support pylon.

Rescuers have lost hope of finding more survivors of the Baltimore bridge collapse, the coast guard said, as efforts switched on Wednesday to looking for bodies of the missing and more answers to why a container ship smashed into the span.Search divers were expected to return near dawn to the waters surrounding the twisted ruins of the bridge in Baltimore Harbor to search for six workers missing and now presumed dead.The disaster has forced the indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the U.S.

Search divers were expected to return near dawn on Wednesday to the waters surrounding the twisted ruins of a bridge knocked down in Baltimore Harbor by a faltering cargo ship, leaving six workers missing and presumed dead.The disaster also forced the indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, and created a traffic quagmire for Baltimore and the surrounding region.As the odds of their survival vanished, the search for the six workers was suspended on Tuesday evening…

The Biden administration on Tuesday gave final approval to Orsted and Eversource's Sunrise Wind offshore wind facility, which is expected to provide power to more than 320,000 homes in New York.The announcement was the latest positive development for the project, which Denmark's Orsted warned just months ago could fail without a new contract that would cover soaring costs for equipment and financing.Orsted and Eversource said separately that they had taken a final investment decision…

Six workers were missing and presumed dead from a bridge that collapsed in Baltimore Harbor early on Tuesday after a massive cargo ship crippled by a power loss rammed into the structure, forcing the closure of one of the busiest ports on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.With dive teams facing increasingly treacherous conditions in the darkened, wreckage-strewn waters, active search-and-rescue operations were suspended about 18 hours after the accident, U.S. Coast Guard and Maryland…

A massive cargo ship smashed into a bridge while sailing out of Baltimore early on Tuesday, sending cars and people into the river below and closing one of the busiest ports on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.Rescuers pulled out two survivors, one of whom was hospitalized, and searched for more in the Patapsco River after huge metal spans of the 1.6-mile (2.57 km) Francis Scott Key Bridge crumpled into the icy water around 1:30 a.m. (0530 GMT).The ship reported a power issue before impact…

The Biden administration on Friday released new rules that will make it easier for offshore wind developers to claim a subsidy for facilities planned in areas that have historically relied on fossil fuel industries for employment.The revision follows nearly a year of warnings by offshore wind companies that their projects might not move forward without access to certain subsidies in President Joe Biden's landmark climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act.Offshore wind is a critical part of Biden's plan to decarbonize the U.S.

Five U.S. labor unions on Tuesday filed a petition with the office of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai requesting a probe into China's alleged unfair policies and practices in the maritime logistics and shipbuilding sectors, the USTR office said.The petition was filed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a statute aimed at combating trade partners' unfair practices.Trade practices are only one component of strains in U.S.-China relations in recent years. Other contentious issues include Taiwan…