Outside/In

  Transcript: Windfall, Part 5: The Just Transition

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Justine Paradis: Outside/In is committed to journalistic rigor and transparency. To learn about the reporting process for this series, visit windfallpodcast.org.

PIANO

Annie Ropeik: This is our final episode of Windfall — so let’s go back to where we started this series. Henrik Stiesdal, the Danish wind turbine inventor with the unruly hair and the short-shorts.

HENRIK STIESDAL: Back in 1976… ended up building a wind turbine for my parents farm. And I got kind of hooked

Annie Ropeik: Henrik was part of an inflection point for the technology of offshore wind. He helped invent bigger and bigger turbines… built in bigger and bigger factories... able to capture ever stronger winds. 

Sam Evans-Brown: But the technology was just one of the inflection points Henrik was part of. There was another sea change at the same time, and the two went hand in hand. 

In 1987, Henrik started making wind turbines at a tiny company you’ve most likely never heard of: Bonus. It only had 80 employees at the time.

HENRIK STIESDAL: When I started in this wind company back almost back in '87, we were 80 people, nine people in engineering. And we had some wonderful Christmas parties… food and drink and I would be dancing and it would be great. 

MUSIC: Ben Cosgrove, Wilder

Sam Evans-Brown: That’s how things started.  Then Bonus was bought by tech giant Siemens. Today, the company has more than 24,000 workers. 

Henrik Stiesdal: around 10 years later, around 98, I was seated for the Christmas party purely with the people I didn’t know. And that's why I saw I had lost this family feeling… I thought, OK. In a way, it was more fun when we were a family, but this is what has to happen.

Somewhere along the way Henrik lost that comfy feeling of working at a little wind energy startup. But he and the company also gained something. 

MUSIC FADE : Ben Cosgrove, Wilder

Annie Ropeik: It gained money. Investment in the technology Henrik pioneered.  

Henrik remembers these meetings in the early 2010s… with bankers and their engineers. They would bombard him with questions about offshore wind… endless questions.

HENRIK STIESDAL: all those different things people wanted to know could be boiled down to you need to convince us why we should invest in this. Ok, fair enough, then from almost from one day to the next around, the change from 2012 to 13, it stopped. I never had any more of those meetings. It just ended. And what came instead was that some of the people would come around and they would not no longer say, you have to convince me why I should invest in one of those project. They would say, do you have one more I can invest in?

MUSIC POST AND FADE: St. Augustine 

Sam Evans-Brown: Here’s one thing the arrival of offshore wind to American shor es really symbolizes: it’s a sort of coming of age of the renewable energy industry. A turning of a corner. For decades renewable energy has been called “alternative energy.” It has carried the cultural baggage of its early associations: hippies, counter-culture, Jimmy Carter and his sweaters. 

It was criticized for being too expensive: a fancy green play-thing for high-minded rich people. 

Annie Ropeik: But now, “alternative” energy has grown up. It wears fancy suits. It’s a stable investment, not a risky one… even for multinational oil majors. 

So the new face of alternative energy … is big companies. The kind that some environmentalists don’t trust. 

Speaker in Rhode Island: Hi. I'm a stay at home mom, now a climate justice activist. I signed up two on the list of those speaking in favor because I needed more time to put together my remarks. But I'm, I really don't want to be counted as speaking in favor or against. I'm deeply ambivalent about this project. 

[MUSIC IN: Clay Pawn Shop stem

Sam Evans-Brown: This is a person who spoke at a public hearing about Vineyard Wind in Rhode Island in 2019. I didn’t get her name - I wish I had.

Speaker in Rhode Island: So yes, we need to build out offshore wind in a big way, but it has to be done responsibly.

Hers is a reaction I’ve seen and heard many times from environmentalists. They like the idea of renewable energy, but they’re sensitive to the environmental disruption that occurs when you build literally anything.

Speaker in Rhode Island: We also have an extinction crisis, a crisis of habitat loss, crises of soil erosion,

And when they start to see how much stuff we’ll have to build to get to a climate friendly energy system … and realize that doing so might involve big corporations … some, with roots in denying climate change… suddenly…  some environmentalists get uneasy. 

Speaker in Rhode Island: Any large scale project will have some unavoidable environmental impacts, but those impacts should be minimised through consultation with all impacted communities from the get-go.

THEME MUSIC RISES

And it seems clear that that hasntt 't happened here. In fact, um, as someone who has been fighting fossil fuel projects for years now, this project sounds all too familiar. 

THEME MUSIC POSTS

Annie Ropeik: From New Hampshire Public Radio this is Windfall, a special series from Outside/In. I’m Annie Ropeik.

Sam Evans-Brown: And I’m Sam Evans-Brown.

The world is in a race against climate change. And offshore wind is one potential game changer. 

Annie Ropeik: BUT … every solution has its costs. Financial... and human. 

So … how much? And who will pay the price? 

Theme Music Posts and Fades

Annie Ropeik: Offshore wind is just one in a huge range of radical changes we’ll need to make in order to prevent the worst effects of warming. 

Fossil fuels are woven into everything we do. They will need to get un-woven - fast - from our homes, our cars, our food. Everything. 

Sam Evans-Brown: And all that will cost a TON of money. How much? Let’s put that to someone whose job it is to try to keep track.

MUSIC IN: Bedroll Zither 

Nat Bullard: So somewhere in the range of a lot. But now it's somewhere, somewhere in the range of two to almost maybe four trillion dollars a year worth of total investment.

Annie Ropeik: This is Nat Bullard… he’s a clean energy finance analyst for Bloomberg. He writes about the money side of the global energy transition. We asked him to help us do the math for the goals of the Paris Climate Accords - how much would it cost to cut emissions so that global warming doesn’t go above about 2 degrees Celsius. 

Sam Evans-Brown: Let me just say that dollar figure again. 2 to 4 trillion a year needs to be spent globally on climate solutions... in order to keep temperatures even remotely under control.

Nat Bullard: But for reference, the investment in energy transition right now that BNSF, our group tracks, was just over 500 billion dollars last year. So for the first time, just over a half a trillion, but therefore, like a fraction of where it would need to be if you wanted to meet those targets.

MUSIC POST AND FADE: Bedroll Zither

Sam Evans-Brown: So… just a quarter of where we need to be. Not great progress. 

Annie Ropeik: And yet, there is so much more money out there we COULD be using. There are investments that the world economy could, in theory, nudge in a new direction to pump up climate solutions. 

Sam Evans-Brown: For one: there’s the money controlled by fancy angel investors, and private equity firms, and venture capitalists like the folks in silicon valley.

Nat Bullard: is about two trillion dollars at the moment. 

Sam Evans-Brown: There’s even more money sitting in pension funds: those are retirement accounts for public workers. 

Nat Bullard: In the world's pension funds, there's a little bit over 50 trillion dollars.

Annie Ropeik: And there’s even more money sitting in the private sector. Things like mutual funds, or index funds… all of those investments that people stick money into instead of stuffing it under their mattress.

 Nat Bullard: among just the 500 largest of the world's asset managers, there's more than one hundred trillion dollars of assets under management. 

Annie Ropeik: And we are just scratching the surface of the global pools of capital. There’s a lot more out there.

Sam Evans-Brown: So…[BIG PAUSE]... 2 to 4 trillion a year invested toward climate solutions...  it sounds like a lot… 

BUT when you tally up the capital in capitalism… we’ve got more than we need. 

MUSIC IN: Lemania  t 

Sam Evans-Brown: The financial turning point for Europe’s offshore wind industry? It was the moment when the biggest retirement funds started to invest. These pension funds are designed to be a safe place to keep workers’ money and be ready to pay it out when they retire.

Remember the meetings Henrik Stiesdal used to have? 

HENRIK STIESDAL: ...you need to convince us why we should invest in this… 

Once the turbines got big enough and the factories got big enough that the projects started to make some money, the pension funds started to see offshore wind as a smart choice. 

Annie Ropeik: It had transitioned from risky… to profitable. Which is what investors like to see. And that’s when everyone else started to pile on. 

HENRIK STIESDAL: ...do you have one more I can invest in? 

MUSIC POST AND FADE: Lemania

Annie Ropeik: But who can actually touch this kind of cash? An offshore wind farm can cost 3… 4 billion dollars… even more if it’s really huge. 

Very few companies have the credibility with lenders to borrow that kind of money. So to convince those lenders to hand it over, it's helpful to have a track record of building massive energy projects. 

Sam Evans-Brown: That's where the oil companies came in. When they started to see wind as a stable investment, it was a signal to lenders - they knew Big Oil wouldn’t be messing with offshore wind if it wasn’t gonna make them money. 

Annie Ropeik: When you look at the list of companies that develop offshore wind farms there are a couple that only do renewable energy: like Iberdrola, a Spanish firm that’s the world’s BIGGEST wind company. 

But then there’s Orsted — the company that used to be Danish Oil and Natural Gas… Equinor — the company that used to be Statoil... 

Sam Evans-Brown: there’s also BP — formerly British Petroleum, but which now says that stands for Beyond Petroleum, and Shell… which is still just Shell.

MUSIC SWELL

Annie Ropeik: This marriage of convenience - between capitalism and climate solutions - will make environmentalists squeamish. But that may be a necessary cost. 

HENRIK STIESDAL: here we have to say that if we want to do something that avoids the emission of billions of tons of CO2 per year, it takes the big players to make it happen. It cannot be done by any cottage industry or anything like that. It does take huge corporations that do it. And that is what it's all about.

Annie Ropeik: Henrik Stiesdal invented a technology that can now actually move the needle on climate change. For that to happen, he had to leave the world of cozy st artups and go corporate.

Sam Evans-Brown: Henrik says that tradeoff felt uncomfortable at first. But he made peace with it. He gave me an analogy for how he thinks about it. 

HENRIK STIESDAL: There's probably it may be just a story, but there's there's a story that Churchill said, the English prime minister said, now I'm an ally of Stalin. I've been always been opposed to communism, but I would sleep with the devil to bring down Hitler.

Sam Evans-Brown: The actual quote itself is a little less quotable than Henrik’s memory of it. Churchill said: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” 

Annie Ropeik: Basically, the enemy of my enemy is my… finance partner?

[Music]

Sam Evans-Brown: After the break: what does it mean to invite the devil into your bed… or whatever the metaphor was. 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<MIDROLL>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Annie Ropeik: This is Windfall, from Outside/In. I’m Annie Ropeik.

Sam Evans-Brown: And I’m Sam Evans-Brown. The financial cost of tackling climate change is daunting - but doable. So let’s say we do it - hit the Paris targets, completely change everything about the global economy in a matter of years. 

Annie Ropeik: It’s a big “if” to put it mildly. But IF we pony up the cash to make it happen… there will still be other costs…. Especially... for certain people. 

MUSIC IN: Lick Stick

Sam Evans-Brown: I wanna tell you about this one fishermen who helped us get our heads around this idea, of a more human cost to fixing climate change. I first met him at that contentious public meeting in Rhode Island. 

JASON JARVIS: You picked the best squid fishing grounds on the eastern seaboard.

Sam Evans-Brown: His name is Jason Jarvis. He lives in Westerly, Rhode Island, in a little house not far from the shore, with sunflowers planted along the road. When I got there, there was a small boat up on a trailer in the yard. 

AMBI RISE

And at Jason Jarvis’ house, the coffee is not for the faint of heart.

[Coffee being poured]

[Door opens, mug gets set down]

JASON JARVIS: It's hot and it's strong, so be careful.

JASON JARVIS: I've been fishing, just catching fish my whole life. That's what we did, you know, as a family. My brothers are fisherman, my nephew is still a fisherman. My dad was a shipbuilder, my grandfather on my mom's side was a fisherman in the Bahamas, so it's genetic. 

Sam Evans-Brown: Jason used to be a crew member on bigger fishing boats. Now, most mornings he drives his own little boat down the river to the sea. He fishes close to shore and sells his catch straight off the dock. 

MUSIC FADE: Lick Stick

So when the turbines start to go up miles offshore, he won’t contend with them. 

The fishermen who will, though? They’re his neighbors - his community. And he’s worried about them. 

Sam Evans-Brown: Fishing is precarious work - often low wage, long hours, dangerous conditions.  subject to regulations that change all the time.

Sam Evans-Brown: And fish and fishing jobs are moving - disappearing - often because of climate change. And that’s a lot of stress to take home. Fishermen have high rates of depression, addiction, anxiety, and suicide. 

JASON JARVIS: Resilient group of humans man. Bounce back every time, but I think a lot of what's going on, I think a lot of people are afraid there will be no bouncing back.

PAUSE

Annie Ropeik: So, a lot of people - businesses, governments - are rooting for offshore wind to be a cornerstone of a huge energy transition. And this has Jason worried his town will be left behind. And he’s angry. Because it’s not a hurricane or a bad haul. If his community suffers, it will be because powerful people, who control billions of dollars of wealth, didn’t listen to people like him. Or they did… and they just didn’t care. 

JASON JARVIS: my favorite word for it is it's a boondoggle... So instead of Danish oil and natural gas now it's Orstead instead of the other one, BP oil is now BP wind. And you have  people that say, oh, well, you know, they're an energy companies. No, they're corporate thugs. 

Music Rises and Ends: Tolls Folly stem

Mijin Cha: Like, I feel like you see these ads from BP that are like BP means beyond petroleum. I just want to, like, throw up. But I guess we could think of it more in the sense of, like, the renewable economy is the economy of the future. So we should feel assured that like that fight is, you know, in some ways we don't have to make that fight anymore. The transition is already occurring. 

Annie Ropeik: This is Mijin Cha, a professor of environmental policy at Occidental College in Los Angeles. 

Mijin Cha: The fight is for us to make it just and this is a fight that has been, you know, throughout history how to make those society more just.

MUSIC IN: Di Breun

Annie Ropeik: How to make it more JUST - more equitable, more fair. Mijin is talking about this concept called the Just Transition. 

Sam Evans-Brown: If you’ve never heard this term, first, picture its opposite. an UN-just transition -

Annie Ropeik: a manufacturing hub gutted by outsourcing and automation. 

Sam Evans-Brown: A Black neighborhood split by the interstate highway system…. 

Annie Ropeik: These un-just transitions happen when the people impacted are basically considered collateral damage. Or not considered at all. 

Sam Evans-Brown: Mijin has studied those un-just transitions - the kind of thing Jason Jarvis fears is gonna happen to his little fishing town. And Mijin says moving to an emissions free economy is shaping up to be a bigger change than any other. 

Mijin Cha: If we think about how unjust previous transitions are, the energy transition is on a scale that we just haven't seen before, because if we think about all the things that use fossil fuels, if all of those workers are unjustly transitioned, I mean, we think we're at record inequality now, but we just won’t, like the levels of devastation and communities that will be lost and workers that will be lost. I think we'll just be on a scale that we've just never seen before.

MUSIC POST AND FADE: Di Breun

Annie Ropeik: So the JUST transition for climate change is a tall order. One that will be easier said than done. 

Sam Evans-Brown: It includes fossil fuel workers - it means new, union jobs for coal miners. But also economic aid for their towns. Considerations for gas station owners, car mechanics, home heating technicians who work with oil and propane. 

Annie Ropeik: It also includes so-called fenceline neighborhoods - people who live and go to school next door to petrochemical refineries in places like Houston and Louisiana. It means taking care of those neighborhoods when those factories shut down… and helping them get healthy after years of being ignored.

Sam Evans-Brown: It means using the climate response to root out inequality… using it to balance the scales.

MUSIC IN: Ben Cosgrove, The Oklahoma Wind Speed Measurement Club

Biden: As we transition to a clean energy future, we must ensure that workers who have thrived in yesterday’s and today’s industries, have as bright a tomorrow in the new industries. 

    [quick post]

Sam Evans-Brown:  Since the day we dropped the first episode of this show, New Jersey has announced it will pay for two massive new wind farms off of Atlantic City. The projects’ developers? A former and current oil major - Orsted and Shell. 

Annie Ropeik: The Biden Administration also wants to open the Gulf of Mexico to wind. The California Coast too. 

Sam Evans-Brown: Up in the North Atlantic, Maine is working on wind turbine platforms that float, so they can go in deeper waters with stronger winds.  

Annie Ropeik: But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about this industry, it’s that nothing’s certain until there’s steel in the water. 

[music post]

Annie Ropeik: So… just, or unjust. Too fast for some, or too slow for the climate. Whatever happens, this transition is already underway.

[pause - tracking note]

Sam Evans-Brown: Whether you see them or not… the blades will be whirling just over the horizon. 

WIND TURBINES + OCEAN SFX

THEME MUSIC

Sam Evans-Brown: Thank you for listening to Windfall. If you missed any part of this series go back, and listen to the whole thing. They’re now all out, on your podcast platform of choice. 

 This episode of Windfall was written by me, Sam Evans-Brown, Jack Rodolico, and Annie Ropeik. It was mixed by Justine Paradis, fact-checked by Sara Sneath and produced by Jack Rodolico. It was edited by Jack Rodolico, Erika Janik, Annie Ropeik, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Taylor Quimby, and Hannah McCarthy. 

Annie Ropeik: Graphics for Windfall were created by Sara Plourde. 

Erika Janik is our executive producer. 

Sam Evans-Brown: Special thanks to Sandeep Pai, Bo Quinn, Sammy Roth and Kim Delfino. 

Annie Ropeik: Music in this episode was by Blue Dot Sessions, Ben Cosgrove, and Brake Master Cylinder.

Sam Evans-Brown: Windfall and Outside/In are productions of New Hampshire Public Radio… which is supported by you… our listeners. 

If you like what you’re hearing, make a donation to support us. There’s a link in the show notes, or at our website windfallpodcast dot org. 

THEME POSTS AND ENDS

Annie Ropeik: That’s a wrap on Sam, everybody!

Sam Evans-Brown: Oh my god.