First I gloated.

Then I checked the receipts.

That seems to leave one obvious thing to do.

Admit what I don't know.

The first two articles in this series looked backward. The first enjoyed the rather ridiculous experience of watching questions I had been asking for years suddenly turn up together in the Fischells Salt Dome Power Generation Project. The second went back through the record to find out whether I had actually been right, or had simply become very good at congratulating myself.

The answer was less satisfying than either extreme.

Some arguments held up. Some were only partly supported. Some of my rhetoric went further than the available evidence. And some of the most important questions remain unanswered.

So before something else happens and I discover that I was a genius all along, let's put those questions on the record now.

Fischells Is a Project. The Question Is What It Becomes.

The revised Fischells proposal is substantial.

Triple Point Resources is proposing wind generation, underground compressed-air energy storage using solution-mined salt caverns, salt production, marine infrastructure and a transmission connection to the existing electrical system at Bottom Brook. The provincial government says the September resubmission also revised the project's “intended market focus,” including exploration of potential future energy exports.¹

The original registration anticipated construction beginning in 2028, full operation by 2031 and a project life of at least 50 years.²

That sounds like development.

But one of the central lessons behind Bayman's Paradox has always been that a project and development are not necessarily the same thing.

The 2022 paper that introduced the Local Paradox argued that large development strategies require local governance with enough autonomy, legitimacy, knowledge and resources to participate meaningfully in them.³

That gives us a much harder test than counting construction jobs.

When the project is operating, what will western Newfoundland actually possess that it did not possess before?

We don't know yet.

Who Is Setting the Agenda?

This question is larger than Fischells.

Who decides what western Newfoundland's resources are for?

Sometimes the answer may be Newfoundland.

Sometimes Ottawa.

Sometimes a company.

Sometimes an international market.

Usually it will be some combination of all of them.

That isn't automatically sinister. Newfoundland is a small economy. Outside investment and outside customers are not abnormalities; they are economic necessities in many industries.

But there is a difference between selling into an outside market and allowing an outside market to determine the shape of your development.

That distinction matters.

Fischells now explicitly contemplates potential future energy exports.¹ That doesn't establish where the electricity will ultimately go, how important exports will become to the business case, or who the eventual customers will be.

So put the first question in the file:

Who ultimately buys the energy?

And underneath it:

How much does that buyer determine what gets built here?

Follow the Value

This is the question behind Green Land, Empty Hands, and it remains unresolved.

Western Newfoundland can provide the land, wind, geology, salt, water access, workers and geographic location for a project and still leave us with an entirely separate question:

Where does the durable value go?

Triple Point currently holds the mineral rights to the Fischells Salt Dome through licences covering approximately 74 square kilometres. The project site also sits near the existing Bottom Brook terminal station and the Maritime Link transmission corridor.⁴

Those facts don't tell us whether the eventual economic arrangement will be good or bad for Newfoundland.

We need considerably more information.

Who provides the capital?

Who owns the generating assets?

Who owns the storage assets?

Where do profits accumulate?

What revenues go to Newfoundland?

What revenues remain in the region?

How much procurement goes to Newfoundland businesses?

What expertise is developed locally?

What happens if ownership changes?

Those answers—not the size of the announcement—will tell us whether economic activity becomes lasting economic capacity.

Jobs Matter. What Happens Afterward Matters More.

This is where Newfoundland's history becomes difficult to ignore.

Jessica Hogan's 2025 research on wind-energy acceptance found strong acceptance of existing wind projects among the communities studied, but what she called “sceptical optimism” toward future development. Residents could see opportunities in new projects while evaluating them through memories of previous resource booms and disruptions.⁵

That's probably a healthier position than either blind enthusiasm or automatic opposition.

Construction jobs matter.

Permanent jobs matter.

Investment matters.

But the longer test is what those things produce.

Does a project create locally owned suppliers?

Do workers acquire skills transferable to other industries?

Do municipalities acquire durable revenues and greater administrative capacity?

Does infrastructure built for one project make the next locally conceived opportunity easier to pursue?

If the developer disappeared in 20 years, would the region still be stronger because the project had been there?

Put that one in the file too.

Consultation Has a Test, Too

I have been critical of consultation, sometimes more broadly than the evidence justified.

So let's make this one measurable.

The environmental assessment process provides opportunities for public comment, and the current Fischells registration remains open for public comments until October 24, with the minister's decision due November 2.⁶

The question isn't whether consultation exists.

It does.

The question is whether we can eventually identify consequential decisions that changed because communities participated.

Did residents merely speak?

Or did their participation alter design, benefits, infrastructure, environmental protections or economic arrangements?

That is a much fairer test than assuming beforehand that consultation is either meaningful democracy or meaningless theatre.

Let's see what happens.

Stop Watching Individual Projects

This may be the outstanding question that interests me most.

Fischells sits beneath an existing transmission corridor and proposes a connection at Bottom Brook.⁴ Newfoundland's environmental-assessment registry also now contains other renewable-energy developments, including Project Tuckamore in the Corner Brook area.⁷

Maybe these remain individual projects.

Maybe they don't.

Infrastructure has a habit of changing what becomes possible around it.

A transmission upgrade built for one development can affect the economics of another. Storage can change the usefulness of intermittent generation. Ports, roads, expertise and industrial services can attract activity nobody anticipated when the first project was approved.

So I am no longer particularly interested in asking whether one wind farm succeeds.

I'm watching for something larger.

Does western Newfoundland gradually develop an energy system?

And if it does:

Who designed it?

Who owns it?

What market does it serve?

And what position does western Newfoundland occupy inside it?

The Bayman’s Paradox Test

This finally brings me back to where this whole thing started.

The Local Paradox was never an argument that development should not happen. Its warning was that grand strategies need capable local governance if communities are going to participate in shaping what happens to them.³

Bayman's Paradox took that problem and kept asking what it looked like on the ground.

So here is the test I want left on the record.

Forget the turbines.

Forget hydrogen.

Forget salt caverns.

Forget whichever project happens to be making headlines this year.

When a major wave of development passes through western Newfoundland, ask what remains.

Is there more locally retained wealth?

More expertise?

More locally owned business?

Better infrastructure?

Stronger institutions?

Greater negotiating power?

More ability to pursue the next opportunity without waiting for somebody from somewhere else to bring it to us?

Most importantly:

Is western Newfoundland more capable of determining its own future than it was before?

If the answer is yes, then something important has changed.

If Fischells and the other developments now emerging leave behind infrastructure, knowledge, businesses, revenues and institutional capacity that the region can use for itself, I'll happily write that article.

It would mean that at least part of the pattern I have spent the last few years writing about is breaking.

I don't know whether that will happen.

I don't know who ultimately buys the electricity.

I don't know who ultimately finances everything now being proposed.

I don't know how much value stays here.

I don't know whether today's individual projects eventually become pieces of something much larger.

And I certainly don't know what the next project, industry, market or outside interest to arrive on Newfoundland's west coast will be.

Good.

Those are questions, not conclusions.

The first article was the gloat.

The second checked the receipts.

These are the receipts that haven't been written yet.

Now they're on the record.

Put a date on it. 

Related Bayman's Paradox Articles

I Hate to Say I Told You So. Actually, No I Don’t.
https://baymansparadox.com/post/i-hate-to-say-i-told-you-so-actually-no-i-dont

Fine. Here Are the Receipts: An Audit of Bayman’s Paradox
https://baymansparadox.com/post/fine-here-are-the-receipts-an-audit-of-baymans-paradox

Related Bayman’s Paradox Reading

The Local Paradox in Grand Policy Schemes: Why Resets Fail in Newfoundland
https://baymansparadox.com/post/the-local-paradox-in-grand-policy-schemes-why-resets-fail-in-newfoundland

Behind the Green Curtain: How Global Contracts and Climate Branding Drove the Wind and Hydrogen Push in Newfoundland
https://baymansparadox.com/post/behind-the-green-curtain-how-global-contracts-and-climate-branding-drove-the-wind-and-hydrogen-push-in-newfoundland

Green Land, Empty Hands: How Resource Governance Leaves Locals With Symbolic Wins
https://baymansparadox.com/post/green-land-empty-hands-how-resource-governance-leaves-locals-with-symbolic-wins

Echoes from Elsewhere: The Manufactured Consent Machine Behind Port au Port’s Greenwashing
https://baymansparadox.com/post/echoes-from-elsewhere-the-manufactured-consent-machine-behind-port-au-port-s-greenwashing

The Narrative Controller: How Nick Mercer Ended Up Writing the Story He Helped Stage
https://baymansparadox.com/post/the-narrative-controller-how-nick-mercer-ended-up-writing-the-story-he-helped-stage

References