Sponsors (5)
The bill directs substantial federal investment to accelerate commercial marine energy—boosting demonstrations, local resilience, jobs, and R&D—while raising federal spending and risking uneven geographic benefits and environmental or research trade-offs if monitoring, equity measures, and offsets are insufficient.
Small businesses, coastal communities, and utilities: at least $600M in competitive funding for 20+ marine energy demonstrations that connect to microgrids, community grids, or utilities will accelerate commercialization and local deployment of marine energy.
Rural, remote, Tribal, and low-income communities: the bill creates funding-priority demonstrations for underserved areas, improving local energy resilience and potentially lowering energy costs in those communities.
Students and researchers: authorization of roughly $230M for R&D plus $20M for education via National Marine Energy Centers supports technology development, testing, and public awareness to advance the marine energy field.
Rural, Tribal, and remote sites plus under-resourced developers: prioritizing projects that already have permits or transmission access and favoring grid-connected projects may advantage better-resourced regions and developers while leaving truly remote or infrastructure-poor sites behind.
Coastal ecosystems and fisheries: the push for rapid deployment could lead to insufficient long-term environmental study or under-resourced mitigation if monitoring and mitigation efforts are not sustained at scale.
Taxpayers and the federal budget: the bill authorizes about $1.0B in new spending, increasing federal outlays and potentially affecting deficits or requiring budget offsets elsewhere.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes $1 billion to create a DOE Marine Energy Acceleration Fund and directs competitive solicitations for demonstrations (≥20) and R&D to advance marine energy.
Official title: To accelerate the competitiveness of the United States in marine energy technologies, and for other purposes.
Introduced October 6, 2025 by Nanette Barragán · Last progress October 6, 2025
Creates a Marine Energy Acceleration Fund at the Department of Energy with $1,000,000,000 authorized (available until expended) to speed development and demonstration of ocean-based power technologies. At least $600,000,000 must fund competitive demonstrations of at least 20 projects that export power to microgrids, community grids, or utility grids and that meet priority factors such as transmission integration, open-water testing, resilience and benefits to rural/remote/Tribal/low-income communities, and support for research, education, workforce, and commercial or national-security uses. Directs DOE to run additional competitive solicitations for R&D and upgrades to R&D facilities, aligns existing National Marine Energy Centers authorities with broader industry, lab, nonprofit, and federal partnerships, and emphasizes rapid design/testing, cost and environmental improvements, domestic manufacturing, public engagement, and stakeholder monitoring. Definitions from existing marine energy statutes are adopted without changing current program structures.