Offshore Wind Could Be the Next Big Breakthrough in Renewable Energy

Governing: Rhode Island once had a lot of firsts to boast about. America’s smallest state was the first to embrace religious freedom, the first to declare independence from Britain and the first to build a successful textile mill, thus bringing the Industrial Revolution to America. But there haven’t been many such milestones lately. Decades of manufacturing job losses and the Great Recession left the state’s economy decimated, languishing in the shadow of neighboring Massachusetts without a clear path to 21st-century viability. In 2013, Rhode Island received a first-place designation that no state covets -- the highest unemployment rate in the country.

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