Volume 2: The Socio-Economic and Regulatory Context

Abstract

This report, part of the Enabling Conditions for a Low Carbon Fishing Fleet series, explores the socio-economic and regulatory factors that may retard or accelerate a transition to a low carbon fishing fleet within U.S. fisheries. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with 148 fishing businesses across Alaska, the West Coast, and New England, it draws attention above all to the economic challenges facing the fishing industry, propelled by increasing costs, unpredictable revenues, regulatory uncertainty, and climate change impacts, which can hinder investments in technologies and vessel upgrades of all kinds, not only those undertaken with the goal of promoting energy efficiency and reduced dependence on fossil fuels. Additional barriers to innovation include aging fleets, aging fishermen, and a lack of shoreside technical expertise. The report also examines the role of fisheries management and fishing vessel safety regulations in constraining or enabling opportunities for energy innovation, and synthesizes criticisms of top-down regulatory mandates like California’s Commercial Harbor Craft Regulation.

Possible solutions suggested by respondents focus on policy changes that foster bottom-up innovation, such as flexible financial incentives, workforce development initiatives, and fisheries management approaches that include energy efficiency as a policy goal. Lessons from international fisheries suggest that stronger public subsidies and partnerships between industry and government are key to enabling fleet modernization and energy innovation in fisheries.

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Volume 1: The Fishing Vessel Energy Baseline

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Volume 3: Waterfront Infrastructure