Transcript: Windfall, Part 3: Squid Pro Quo
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Annie Ropeik: Heads up - there is one curse word in this episode. OK, on with the show.
MUSIC IN - Ben Cosgrove, The Machine in the Garden
Annie Ropeik: The U.S. offshore wind industry is ready to launch. Right now, there are no grid-scale wind farms in American waters. But there are dozens of projects in line on the Atlantic Coast, all waiting for federal approval. All together, those projects would do a lot to meet America’s climate goals - enough potential energy to power two New York Cities.
Today we’re going to talk about the project at the front of the line… and about how it powered through the forces that opposed it.
MUSIC FADE - Ben Cosgrove, The Machine in the Garden
But first, we hope you’ll allow us a small diversion into Joe McNamara’s unlikely 15 seconds of fame.
JOE MCNAMARA: My name is Joe McNamara, a state representative representing Warwick and Cranston, the Pawtuxet Village area. I'm also chairman of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.
SAM EVANS-BROWN: So in that role, you got the... the honor of announcing the delegates for... for Joe Biden?
JOE MCNAMARA: That is correct.
Annie Ropeik: Joe McNamara was one of the parade of state party chair-people who appeared on Zoom last August to announce that then candidate Biden had won the democratic nomination for president. The DNC told him they wanted an uplifting personal story from the state.
JOE MCNAMARA: I said, that's what the DNC is stating. Here's what we're going to do. We are going to make a thirty something odd second promotion for the state of Rhode Island. End of story.
MUSIC IN - Vernouillet
JOE MCNAMARA: So here's my idea. And we went with it.
[video] Joe McNamara: Rhode Island, the Ocean State where our restaurant and fishing industry have been decimated by this pandemic,
Sam Evans-Brown: The scene is a beach. Joe is stage left, wearing a button down with rolled up sleeves and… sunglasses?
JOE MCNAMARA: I had my transition lenses on. I had meant to bring another pair of glasses so it wouldn't look like I had sunglasses.
Annie Ropeik: Next to him is a guy dressed all in black... a black mask and a black chef's hat. His shirt and hat say “Iggy’s” and down at belt level he’s holding a generous plate of fried calamari.
Sam Evans-Brown: Ok, cue Joe.
[video] Joe McNamara: are lucky to have a governor, Gina Raimundo, whose program lets our fishermen sell their catches directly to the public, and our state appetizer calamari is available in all fifty states. The Calamari Comeback State of Rhode Island casts one vote for Bernie Sanders and thirty-four votes for the next president, Joe Biden.
MUSIC OUT - Vernouillet
Annie Ropeik: He’d wanted to hand his 15 seconds of fame to calamari… specifically, Rhode Island’s calamari industry. And it worked. The next day Joe was on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
JOE MCNAMARA: And we realized there were 100,000 hits on Rhode Island calamari within an hour ...and it did exactly what we wanted to do…
Annie Ropeik: The Internet ate it up.
JOE MCNAMARA: So when Jimmy Fallon did it, he had the same color shirt. You see that?
Sam: No I haven’t
MUSIC IN - Vernouillet
JOE MCNAMARA: if you Google Jimmy Fallon calamari...
[Video] Jimmy Fallon: Calamari is the most perfect food in existence. It tastes like rubbery chicken circles that you left out in the rain.
Annie Ropeik: Promoting his state’s small but significant calamari fishery is kind of a political project for Joe.
Sam Evans-Brown: In 2014 Joe sponsored a bill that made calamari the official state appetizer, though he was criticized for having given away free calamari to lawmakers right before the vote.
JOE MCNAMARA: And I said, listen closely. There was no squid pro quo related to that vote. [laughs]
MUSIC FADE - Vernouillet
Annie Ropeik: SO. There’s a reason we’re telling you all this.
THEME MUSIC - PIANO
Sam Evans-Brown: It’s because the latest reason the United States hit pause on launching the offshore wind industry … was the calamari comeback.
THEME MUSIC RISE
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.
Sam Evans-Brown: Last time, we told you about the epic failure of Cape Wind, the project that was going to be America’s first offshore wind farm.
Annie Ropeik: That was something of a David and Goliath story… where David was a scrappy little wind developer and Goliath was all those billionaire opponents … Now the roles are reversed. This time, … David is a scrappy little fishery in America’s smallest state. And Goliath is the wind industry.
Annie Ropeik: On this episode... how American politics shifted that balance of power.
THEME MUSIC OUT
Sam Evans-Brown: At the end of 2017, Jim Gordon, the developer behind Cape Wind gave up.
Annie Ropeik: But -- the federal government had already moved on. Before Jim Gordon pulled the plug on his project, the feds had launched their new strategy for offshore wind - a strategy that would, hopefully, avoid the conflicts that plagued Cape Wind.
That process was called Smart from the Start. And the federal government designed it to pick places where the turbines would be out of the way.
Sam Evans-Brown: The result? It pushed the industry farther offshore… away from multi-million dollar seaside homes, away from pleasure boats and ferries, away from indigenous archeological sites.
Almost the only folks left in conflict with the wind turbines… are the fishing industry.
MUSIC IN - Clay Pawn Shop
[00:03:10-00:03:20] NORBERT STAMPS: My name's Norbert Stamps. I could throw 3-4-5 titles around, but the only one that means a shit to me is that I've been a commercial fisherman since 1972.
Annie Ropeik: This is a public meeting in 2019 of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council. We’re in a 1970s-era university auditorium, fishermen lining up at the mic. They’re speaking out against the first offshore wind project in line for the government’s new approval process.
Sam Evans-Brown: It was a meeting where some fishermen thought they could make a last stand against the wind industry.
JOSIAH DODGE: I'm really not good at this stuff. My name is Josiah Dodge, which means nothing to anyone, really not a celebrity or a star. What I am is a member of a family that's been fishing in the state of Rhode Island, proven since 1661.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE - Clay Pawn Shop
Think about that. That's a hundred years. Just about before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Sam Evans-Brown: When it comes to their symbolism, their cultural significance, and the soft-power they wield, the fishing industry is a little bit like the coal mining industry. They’re easy stand-ins for blue-collar workers who feel threatened by environmentalism writ large. Up before dawn, out for days at a time in foul weather, bringing home a domestic food through dangerous conditions.
NORBERT STAMPS: all these guys in this room. We grew up together. I fished with Hardy, I fished with Jerry Carvallo when I was 15. We're a family here. Families fight, but we're a family. This is a community.
Annie Ropeik: These fishers we’re hearing from are mostly from Rhode Island, mostly from one fishery -- squid. Calamari. It’s not the most profitable fishery in the country - in 2019, that was salmon, worth something like 20 times what squid brought in.
Squid is literally and figuratively a small cephalopod in a big ocean. But in Rhode Island? It’s the biggest fishery in the state.
JASON JARVIS: You picked the best squid fishing grounds on the eastern seaboard.
Annie Ropeik: This first big wind farm -- it’s called Vineyard Wind. Vineyard Wind is supposed to go right in the middle of those squid fishing grounds… where these fishers make their living, in federal waters between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The wind project is a partnership between two multi-billion dollar companies: a Danish investment firm, and a Spanish firm that is the biggest wind energy producer in the world. So the squid boats are worried these developers, these powerful forces, will push them out.
MEGAN LAPPE: Ladies and gentlemen, this is what's known as an uprising. We, the fishing industry of the state of Rhode Island refuse to be told that our businesses, our investments, our futures are worth less than what they actually are.
Sam Evans-Brown: All the while during this presentation, the executives from Vineyard Wind… their lawyers… were simply standing in the back of the room.
This feels… in some ways… like a sign of maturity from the wind industry. In my two years of watching them wind their way through the regulatory process, I never once heard the team at Vineyard Wind get off-script. Never heard them get into shouting matches during a media interview, like Jim Gordon did during the Cape Wind Saga.
They stood, quietly, on the sideline and took their licks.
The first time I interviewed the CEO of Vineyard Wind, Lars Pederson, was at this meeting. I caught up with him in a crowded hallway right after.
LARS PETERSON: Yeah, i's a big deal for us. It allows us to move forward with what we believe is a very important project. 800 megawatts will generate a lot of clean, affordable electricity to New England consumers and be basically a kickstart of an industry that will also generate jobs. So it's a very important to date for us today.
Sam Evans-Brown: The whole exchange was 3 minutes, and he was very controlled… almost frustratingly even keeled… a complete poker face… never even hinting at dismissing the concerns of the fishing industry.
LARS PEDERSON: I think we have learned quite a lot from this process on what the importance is from the fishing industry. There's parts of the fishing industry that wants to go in a particular orientation. There's also other parts of the fishing industry that want to go in the orientation that we have had. And it’s a tradeoff. Fishing is a very diverse industry.
Annie Ropeik: Lars Pederson is a quietly significant figure within offshore wind. And he kind of embodies the change within the industry itself.
He made a name for himself during his years working at a corporation called Danish Oil and Natural Gas, which has since rebranded itself as Orsted. In 2008, the company’s CEO made a pledge to flip its business model — from a portfolio dominated by fossil fuels to one dominated by renewables.
Sam Evans-Brown: Lars was part of a small team who were given six months to come up with a business plan that would make offshore wind profitable. Today, Orsted is the biggest offshore wind company in the world.
Lars was given the reins of Vineyard Wind. The company that would build the first large-scale offshore wind farm here… in America.
LARS PEDERSON: I think this will be a project that everybody will learn from. Being the first that definitely comes with some challenges.
Listening quietly while people trash your project at a public hearing is — in a way — a flex. It’s an awareness that you know the rules of the game. You’re willing to wait it out.
MUSIC IN - Ben Cosgrove,Oklahoma Wind Speed Measurement Club
Annie Ropeik: Unlike Jim Gordon and Cape Wind, Lars Pederson knew the steps Vineyard Wind had to follow: because, thanks to Smart from the Start, there WERE steps to follow. Vineyard Wind bought the lease at the auction, submitted the plan, were getting an environmental review.
The fishermen? They were ... a wrinkle. A hurdle to jump over and run past.
That was the point of this meeting in 2019. Vineyard Wind was offering the squid fishers a payout - $17 million dollars.
Sam Evans-Brown: The fishermen could express their frustration, but when it came down to it, they could just vote to take the money… or not take the money.
NORBERT STAMPS: It sucks, but that's the reality. The way I understand it. We've been outmaneuvered boys.
MUSIC SWELL - Ben Cosgrove, Oklahoma Wind Speed Measurement Club
Annie Ropeik: The fishermen ...took... the money.
Sam Evans-Brown: I remember, at the time, thinking, “If we’re just following this project through the regulatory process, this offshore wind series is going to be boring.”
The sense was… this… is… happening.
Annie Ropeik: Then it just… didn’t.
Remember -- in the midst of the Cape Wind debacle - Congress passed a law, and that law handed the executive branch the power to write a whole new playbook for offshore wind. It was a kind of promise that if a company followed a series of predictable rules, the government would give a series of predictable responses.
At least that’s how it was supposed to work.
But the problem was that, even with that new playbook in hand, the executive branch was only as predictable ... as the executive himself.
MUSIC FADE - Ben Cosgrove, Oklahoma Wind Speed Measurement Club
[video] Donald Trump: We’re doing it right… and you know our numbers environmentally are better than they’ve ever been right now. Cuz I’m an environmentalist I am!
Annie Ropeik: Donald Trump was president at this time. Donald Trump, the climate change denier, who falsely claimed wind turbines cause cancer…
Sam Evans-Brown: ...who sued Scotland for approving an offshore wind farm within sight of one of his golf courses…
Annie Ropeik: ...And who just generally -- seemed to just kind of hate the things.
[video] Donald Trump: They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You wanna see a bird graveyard, you just go, take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen in your life.
Annie Ropeik: So not pro wind. This didn’t bode well for Vineyard Wind, which would need its final approval from the Trump administration.
But it was hard to tell what the administration really thought. Remember in our first episode, that $400-million-dollar federal auction for offshore wind leases? That was under Trump’s Interior Department[!]. Their press release afterwards said “BIDDING BONANZA,” in all caps with an exclamation point. Quote: Trump Administration Smashes Record for Offshore Wind Auction.”
MUSIC IN - Blue Dot Sessions Slate Tracker
So Vineyard Wind was asking this man’s government for permission to start construction. And that permission would open the door for the next wind farm, and all the ones in line after. It would be a trailblazing moment for climate action in America. All down to the Trump administration.
Sam Evans-Brown: It seemed that we were headed for a collision of two non-negotiable truths of Republican politics: the unstoppable force that is support for energy companies who want to spend billions of dollars on American soil, speeding towards the here-to-for unmovable object that is the parties dismissal or outright denial of the threat of climate change.
Annie Ropeik: Vineyard Wind thought that between doing lots of outreach, setting aside millions in mitigation money, and following the new federal law to the T, they were following all the rules of the game.
Sam Evans-Brown: But the fishing industry — thanks to their soft power… the currency their cultural symbolism carried in the Trump Administration — had access to another set of rules.
MUSIC FADE: Blue Dot Sessions Slate Tracker
NICOLA GROOM: I started to see some reports out there about Vineyard Wind hitting a couple of snags in its permitting.
Annie Ropeik: Nicola Groom is a Reuters reporter, and she was the first to figure out what was going on… when Vineyard Wind suddenly seemed to stall.
Sam Evans-Brown: What she found -- was the squid fishers.
Annie Ropeik: Nicola was looking at a meeting of a sub-sub federal body that regulates fishting. They were one of the many groups of bureaucrats that get to provide input on projects like Vineyard Wind.
NICOLA GROOM: some officials actually announced at that meeting that they were not concurring with the design of the project that BOEM selected.
Sam Evans-Brown: It used to be, many different agencies signed off on a project as big as Vineyard Wind. But Trump issued an executive order that was supposed to speed up environmental reviews for energy projects…
It said a single agency would give the final sign off. In this instance it would be BOEM, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Annie Ropeik: But before BOEM gave the final yes or no on Vineyard Wind, it still needed to accept input from other agencies - including fishery regulators. And those fishery regulators didn’t like what they saw in the proposal.
NICOLA GROOM: The turbines were closer together than the fishing industry wanted and they were not oriented in the east-west direction that the fishermen preferred.
Annie Ropeik: Basically, the fishery managers thought the particular way the turbines were laid out would make it too hard to keep fishing in that area. Here’s the ruling they sent to BOEM:
NICOLA GROOM: No. We don’t agree. That is not the design of the project that is best for the fishing industry.
MUSIC IN -- Setting Up
News Clip: A proposed offshore wind farm off the coast of New Bedford has been stalled by the federal Government
Annie Ropeik: After months of waiting, with no official explanation of what was going on…
Sam Evans-Brown: The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, suddenly announced it needed more time.
News Clip: As we first reported on Friday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it would like to further review the 800MW wind farm that would further move Massachusetts toward Clean Energy Efficiency.
Annie Ropeik: It was a curveball. The administration was cramming an extra, bigger hurdle into Vineyard Wind’s approval process -- a cumulative environmental review.
They said before they approved Vineyard Wind, they were going to tally up the combined impacts of ALL the wind farms planned for the East Coast.
They used the Vineyard Wind process to hit pause on the whole industry.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE - Setting Up
Annie Ropeik: So what was going on inside the Trump Administration? Because this was not in the playbook. Was it politics? Did Donald Trump himself swoop in and put a halt to Vineyard Wind?
We talked to a reporter who seemed to get closer to answering those questions than anyone. Ben Storrow, with E&E News submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Trump Administration.
Ben Storrow: They it's it's basically internal communications. It's heavily redacted.
Annie Ropeik: The request didn’t show much. He got page after page of just black squares, but...
Ben Storrow: the thing that caught my reporter radar was this record of decision, um, for Vineyard win and record. The decision is the last step in the permitting process. And it was just a cover page.
Annie Ropeik: One of the emails shows that BOEM was ready to move forward and give its final word on Vineyard Wind. But before they announced what that decision was, they turned around and said they were halting Vineyard Wind, and the whole industry waiting behind it.
Ben Storrow: if the staff thought, you know, they had enough information to publish a record of decision back in 2019, it suggests that there could be more political reasons for the delay.
Annie Ropeik: The implication was, this concern from the fishers … about the turbines upending their livelihoods … it registered with the Trump administration. They appeared to take both the rhetoric and the concerns of this blue collar industry very seriously. Seriously enough to freeze the whole machine.
[Music: St. Augustine stems]
LARS PEDERSON: Yeah, obviously, that was a devastating blow to the vineyard wind one project.
I interviewed Lars Pederson, the CEO of Vineyard Wind, again last summer about what this meant for the project.
LARS PEDERSON: So we had booked vessels, we had booked manufacturing slots, we had booked equipment. So being put on hold effectively meant the majority of those contracts had to be canceled.
SAM EVANS-BROWN: Has Vineyard Wind quantified how much that delay corst the project.
LARS PEDERSON: Yeah, we have quantified that. But, eh… err..
SAM EVANS-BROWN: But I don't get to know?
LARS PEDERSON: No, that's right.
MUSIC IN -- Ben Cosgrove, Wilder
Sam Evans-Brown: A multi-billion dollar company losing an undetermined amount of money perhaps is not something that has you shedding tears into your breakfast cereal.
But this was more than that, enough clean energy is queued for construction off the East Coast to power two and half New York Cities… enough to power all of New England on the hottest of days.
Annie Ropeik: And remember, in the scramble to prevent the worst effects of climate change… any delay for huge amounts of zero-carbon energy -- that time matters.
Sam Evans-Brown: All of that potential was put on hold, and a new industry... held its breath.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE - Ben Cosgrove, Wilder
Annie Ropeik: We’ll be right back.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Midroll>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sam Evans-Brown: Welcome back to Windfall, I’m Sam Evans-Brown
Annie Ropeik: And I’m Annie Ropeik.
So the Trump administration put a hold on Vineyard Wind… and with it, the whole U.S. offshore wind industry. And that decision seemed rooted in Rhode Island - in the fears of squid fishermen.
So we wanted to understand whether science confirmed those fears. What happens to fish - or fishermen - when you build a wind farm?
MUSIC IN -- Palladian
Sam Evans-Brown: I did a lot of reporting on this question…
Like… the whole science reporter thing: went out on a boat…
[Boat horn toots] [Boat Ambi]
… and talked to the very cool people doing the very cool science.
People who are taking photos of the sea bed, people who are exploring the effects of turbine noise and the radiation that power lines give off on marine life.
Annie Ropeik: One main takeaway: in Europe, as their industry grew, they didn’t do a lot of this kind of research. They’ve built more than 5000 wind turbines but only done around a dozen controlled studies.
MUSIC FADE -- Palladian
Sam Evans-Brown: To sum up what I learned — well, here's what I asked scientist Kevin Stokesbury.
SAM EVANS-BROWN: when it comes to what do we know, there's like way more that we don't know than what we do know just because a lot of those studies weren't done ahead of time.
KEVIN STOKESBURY: For for for wind. Yeah, I mean, that's true for fisheries, too, and basically for science, which makes it why science is so interesting.
Sam Evans-Brown: That said… from the things we do know there don’t seem to be any glaring flashing warning signs. In fact, the most persistent finding is that there tend to be more fish inside wind farms than outside, maybe because in Europe a lot of wind farms are closed to fishing… but maybe also because of something called the reef effect: sea life just likes gathering around stuff in the water.
Annie Ropeik: That’s worked out great for sport fishermen at some wind farms - when it’s a handful of people on a small boat, fishing around a turbine with rod and reel.
But commercial fishermen - whose whole livelihoods depend on big catches - could be a different story. Which brings us back to the squid fishers.
The science may be ambiguous, but their minds are made up.
Megan Lapp: The ocean looks like a big place, but for fishing it's not.
Sam Evans-Brown: Megan Lapp is the fisheries liaison for Sea Freeze Limited. They own a seaforod processing plant on shore, but they also operate two of the biggest trawlers in the Northeast.
MUSIC IN - Palladian
Imagine navigating a boat that big, dragging a huge net, sometimes a half mile or more behind you… now, add in wind turbines.
MUSIC FADE - Palladian
Megan Lapp: Imagine that you're driving a Volkswagen Beetle through New York City with a hot air balloon attached behind you… and you've got to try to drive through the city and make turns and maneuver through the city without that hot air balloon touching a building… Good luck.
Annie Ropeik: These were the concerns that the Trump administration was hearing… and responding to.
MUSIC IN - Di Breun
Annie Ropeik: So the administration’s delay of Vineyard Wind entered its second year. But, during that time, the wind developer was making the most of it. Two years is a long time in the fast-changing world of offshore wind.
Lars Pederson: Yeah, if you talk to my engineering team, they will say it's a new project.
Sam Evans-Brown: Here’s Lars Pederson again, in an interview just a few months back.
We had to change the suppliers. We had to change the design. We had to change the… orientation and the spacing between the turbines... when the project was put on hold in 2019. the project, quote unquote, died and you had to reinvent the whole project.
MUSIC FADE - Di Breun
Sam Evans-Brown: The fact that Vineyard Wind had to basically start over, from scratch, meant that they were able to do things differently. They actually redesigned the whole layout of the project to make it more friendly… to calamari.
Annie Ropeik: And it wasn’t just Vineyard Wind. Four other developers -- all the projects in the queue for Massachusetts and Rhode Island -- all adopted the *same* layout.
And another thing. During that delay - the newest model turbines came out. Offshore wind technology is still advancing so fast. Vineyard Wind could now generate the same amount of power… with a lot fewer turbines. From more than 100 down to 62.
Annie Ropeik: This is where things stood in late 2020. Vineyard Wind had a whole new plan. And the Trump Administration had signaled they weren’t gonna decide on the project until after the election. And then--
MUSIC IN - Vernouillet
[election 2020 SFX]: Joe Biden has won the American presidential election. The BBC has...
Annie Ropeik: So Biden was set to be president - after he campaigned on embracing climate action and renewable energy. Vineyard Wind’s application was now in front of a lame-duck, and kind of hostile, president - Donald Trump.
And from the outside, this is where it felt like the project and the outgoing administration started playing tug-of-war.
Sam Evans-Brown: Vineyard Wind asked to pause its application, and the Trump administration said you can’t pause it… you can withdraw it and start all over.
Also, the Trump Administration put out a legal memo, that would have made it very easy to appeal the approval of any offshore wind farm.
Annie Ropeik: It felt like the Trump Administration was tossing a grenade over its shoulder. And the fishing industry was pretty excited.
Meghan Lapp: it's like common sense. And for the first time, we are seeing some common sense in the process. And that is refreshing.
Sam Evans-Brown: But as soon as Biden was inaugurated, Vineyard Wind announced it didn’t want to pause its application anymore. And the Biden Administration wiped the slate clean. They withdrew that legal memo, repudiated it… issued an executive order calling for all agencies to accelerate offshore wind permitting.
By May, Vineyard Wind had its final permit.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE - Vernouillet
Annie Ropeik: And the thing is, the result of the whole ordeal… kind of confirmed the fishermen’s worst fears.
In the “record of decision” on Vineyard Wind, the Biden Administration wrote that the wind developer wasn’t allowed to lock any vessel out of the turbine area. But, quote-”due to the placement of the turbines it is likely that the entire ... area will be abandoned by commercial fisheries due to difficulties with navigation.”end quote.
Basically, the Biden administration acknowledged that fishing within the offshore wind farm - might be a thing of the past.
MUSIC IN: Ben Cosgrove, Oklahoma Wind Measurement Club
Annie Ropeik: And the Administration made one more decision around this time - kind of a symbolic one.
All the time Vineyard Wind was negotiating with the fishers and the government, Gina Raimondo was the governor of Rhode Island. She and the fishermen had clashed before, nd the fishers didn’t like her. They spoke out against her at public meeting - they felt she’d ignored their concerns about wind.
So -- Biden’s elected -- and who does he pick as his commerce secretary - the person who would also be the nation’s top fisheries regulator?
He tapped ... Gina Raimondo.
MUSIC SWELL
Commerce Secretary Raimondo made a trip recently to New Hampshire. And I asked her. Was she confident these wind projects could be done without hurting the fishing industry.
GINA RAIMONDO: I am, I am. I am confident because we’ve done it in Rhode Island. You have to be data based, and fact-based… it’s critical to have a dialogue with the fishermen, but it’s absolutely possible.
Annie Ropeik: It’s a political statement, one that seeks to put a lid on the uncertainty and conflict that *will* continue for fishermen, around this project and all the next ones.
KEVIN SULLIVAN: I really don't think that the Rhode Island fishermen need to take the blunt of climate control in general. It's not us. We're doing our share. Believe me. And I also just don't believe that we can coexist at all.
Sam Evans-Brown: Vineyard Wind has cleared its last major hurdle. But the metaphor of a hurdle is maybe a telling one when you dwell on it. Do any of them ever actually stop the runners? Clearing the hurdles is the norm… it’s what you expect…
The offshore wind giants … Shell… BP… Equinor… Orsted… these are Oil Majors… they know how to clear hurdles.
Fishermen? They’ve got their blue-collar symbolism and their soft power. Oil majors? They’ve got something else, money. Which is to say… hard power.
MUSIC SWELL AND END - Ben Cosgrove, Oklahoma Wind Speed Measurement Club
Annie Ropeik: Next time on Windfall… who stands to profit.
ZIVEN DRAKE: I'm, I'm a hippie from Vermont. I'm a, I'm a big believer in climate change and what's going on. It's devastating. But on the other hand, again, it's it's money in my pocket and job security for myself and my people for ever
[Theme Music]
Credits
Annie Ropeik: This episode of Windfall was reported by Sam Evans-Brown. It was produced by Jack Rodolico, and written by Sam, Jack, and me, Annie Ropeik. It was mixed by Justine Paradis and fact-checked by Sara Sneath.
Sam Evans-Brown: It was edited by 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.
Special thanks to Miriam Wasser of WBUR and Craig Lemoult of WGBH. Thanks also to Christa Bank, Jean Flemma, Andrew Gill, David Bidwell, Henrik Lund, John Mitchell, Callan Tansill-Suddath, the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies.
Sam Evans-Brown: The voices of the fishermen you heard in the public meeting were Norbert Stamps, Josiah Dodge, Kevin Sullivan, Jason Jarvis, and Meghan Lapp.
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