On Friday, September 20, the Log Lunch community gathered to hear from the first speaker of the year — Jessica Bravo, Deputy Chief Environmental Officer at Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages energy, mineral, and ecological resources on federally owned lands and waters. Jessica and her team manage energy production over an area covering 3.2 billion acres, which is more than a billion acres larger than the Continental U.S.. “We are supposed to be doing this in an environmentally and economically responsible way,” Jessica said.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the second largest income producer for the federal government after the IRS. “We collect rent from industry developments on your lands, and industry pays into the U.S. treasury and we all benefit from services the government then provides,” Jessica said. She and her team are responsible for managing offshore oil, gas, and wind, along with mineral development for coastal resilience.
In order to stay under the globally agreed-upon limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, the U.S. needs to be producing 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035, and to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. “For my team, this means looking at a massive shift away from purely fossil fuels towards renewable sources,” Jessica said. In 2023, more than 80% of energy production in the U.S. was from fossil fuels.
Offshore wind will be an important component of this necessary shift. In order to help the U.S. meet its energy goals, it will have to produce 30 gigawatts of wind energy per year by 2030, and 110 gigawatts per year by 2050. 30 gigawatts is equivalent to 2.5% of the U.S.’s yearly energy production. “It’s not insignificant,” Jessica said. 30 gigawatts is enough to power 18 million cars or 10 million homes for one year.
Jessica described her agency as the “landlords” of federally-owned waters, with industry being the “tenants.” She and her team review industry plans for developing offshore facilities, which they use to create leasing plans. They use the best available science to inform these plans, and are able to fund studies when they find gaps in the science. They work with stakeholders, including fisheries, the Coast Guard and Navy, and the general public to think through the possible impacts of industry plans. Often, offshore facilities have disproportionate impacts on marginalized peoples, such as Indigenous fishing communities, and Jessica said that listening to and engaging with these groups is an important part of the agency’s role.
These plans also have to take into account the fact that the ocean is already changing due to climate change, and will continue to for the foreseeable future. “These facilities will still be in the ocean 40 years from now,” Jessica said, speaking to the necessity to take an ecological perspective that accounts for things like species movement and altered migration patterns.
The reports that they then produce are made available both to the public and to elected and appointed officials, who are ultimately responsible for creating energy policy. Elected officials in Congress are also responsible for providing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management with funding, and the funding amount impacts their ability to create new studies, make sure stakeholder voices are being heard, and enable the agency to actually monitor facilities and enforce their policies in court.
“Presidential elections matter, state elections matter,” Jessica said. “If you care about energy policy in the U.S., pay attention to who’s making decisions here.”
The Log Lunch chefs prepared a delicious meal of steamed buns with tofu and zucchini filling, soy ginger dipping sauce, tomato egg stir fry with sticky rice, miso roasted carrots, smashed cucumber salad with spicy soy vinegar dressing, garlic steamed bok choy, and garlic peanut sauce. For dessert, they made thumbprint cookies with a coconut caramel filling.
BY CHARLOTTE STAUDENMAYER ’25