At State’s Energy Summit, Wyoming Promises to ‘Make Sure Our Fossil Fuels Have a Future’

In late April, the Biden administration finalized a series of rules that would reduce emissions and pollution from the power sector. A week later, at Wyoming’s annual energy conference, those moves were met with frustration, dismay and, at times, downright defiance from politicians and fossil fuel company executives who spoke glowingly about the state’s “all of the above” energy future.

Despite that mantra, the conference hosted by the Wyoming Energy Authority, the agency responsible for doling out millions of taxpayer dollars to state-based energy projects, reserved most of its panels for companies and politicians planning to thread fossil fuels through the eye of the U.S. clean energy transition needle. 

The two-day event kicked off in a handsome conference center in Blue Credit Union’s Cheyenne headquarters where industry representatives, energy policymakers, conservationists and politicians heard presentations on topics like carbon dioxide sequestration, the future of coal, oil and natural gas, mining rare earth elements and renewable energy. The atmosphere was cordial, with a buzz after the announcement that this year’s conference set an attendance record—roughly 270 people over two days, according to an event spokesperson. 

Few panelists expressed any urgency for Wyoming, which emits the most greenhouse gases per capita of any U.S. state, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, to shift from oil, gas and coal to renewable energy, and the audience appeared unconcerned about proposals to extend the state’s dependance on its notoriously boom-or-bust legacy fossil fuel industries.

“I did take note of the lack of urgency,” said Claire Deuter, a renewables energy organizer and attorney with the Powder River Basin Resource Council who attended the conference. “Holding on to the past without really preparing for the future is not setting up Wyoming for success.” 

A full clean energy transition in Wyoming would require the state to part with tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue from the oil, gas and coal industries, much of which funds local public services in its small communities. Renewable energy is not expected to completely replace that source of revenue in the coming decades, despite the industry’s already sizable contributions to Wyoming’s tax base.

Though fossil fuels and their adjacent industries dominated the conference agenda, nuclear energy and renewable energy each received a panel of their own. This represented progress for some who had attended the conference since its inception in 2022.

“We’re starting to talk more about the topics that are driving the energy transition,” said John Burrows, the energy and climate policy director at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, who attended the conference. “It really did feel more about ‘all of the above’ energy than I’ve seen in the past, where it’s been largely fossil fuel dominant.” 

Despite that progress, the substance and tone of several speakers indicated Wyoming is eager to justify the continued proliferation of fossil fuels by investing in unproven and costly carbon capture technology, and ready to challenge any federal regulations that may make it more difficult to use fossil fuels at power plants.

More Is More, or Obstructionism?

“Our number one reason for doing carbon capture is to make sure our fossil fuels have a future that will be long past any of us here in this room,” said Wyoming Energy Authority director Rob Creager in the event’s opening remarks. “Our mindset is an ‘all of the above’ approach. More is more.”

In the face of the larger transition to clean energy across the Mountain West, Wyoming’s “all of the above” energy strategy has been cast by some as obstructionist. Matt Henry, a former assistant instructional professor at the University of Wyoming, who now works as an energy transition social scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said the state is trying to “have plausible deniability” as it searches for ways to keep burning fossil fuels. 

“Many Wyoming policymakers, industry officials and residents express hostility toward the idea of transition,” wrote Henry in a paper published earlier this year. He did not attend the energy conference, but is familiar with the state’s politics from his years of working there. “There is reluctance to abandon an industry that has long been central to the state’s economic fortunes and cultural and political imaginary.” 

“While that reluctance is warranted to some degree, if the goal is to make sure fossil fuels survive at the expense of communities thriving, that’s jarring,” he said after the summit.

Gov. Mark Gordon began his remarks with an anecdote from his childhood. One spring, during a “monumental” snowstorm, Gordon and his family lost power at their ranch. According to Gordon, his family lasted through the multi-day power outage because they had stockpiled propane, which they used to heat the house. “We didn’t want electric heat because you couldn’t count on it,” he said.

​​“There’s real opportunity in renewables” for Wyoming, Gordon said later, adding that the technology has become more reliable. But renewable energy alone won’t be enough to meet the world’s projected future electricity demand, he said, and clean energy innovation is proof that Wyoming’s legacy industries deserve to be preserved. “To say [innovation] can’t happen with coal and oil and gas is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

“While that reluctance is warranted to some degree, if the goal is to make sure fossil fuels survive at the expense of communities thriving, that’s jarring.”

But the state’s energy industries are not operating on a “level playing field,” Gordon said. The Biden administration “believes that the way you build [electrical] capacity is to provide more regulation for less of it,” he said, and is favoring renewables at the expense of Wyoming’s legacy industries. 

The oil and gas industry has received and continues to receive federal subsidies, and the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate law, contains millions in subsidies for carbon capture, nuclear generation, hydrogen fuel development and fossil fuel adjacent projects. All those technologies appeal to Wyoming’s oil, gas and coal industries for their potential to involve fossil fuel infrastructure and maintain the combustion energy economy. 

“We are going to do everything that we can to make sure that our legacy industries share the same opportunities new industries coming on board have,” Gordon said.

Fighting for a Fossil Fuel Future

Panelists representing the fossil fuel industry expressed optimism that technological innovations and the forecasted global rise in energy demand would keep their products viable in the future. Pete Obermueller, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, an industry trade association, delivered a fluid address where he painted a picture of unbroken innovation in his industry, hamstrung only by harmful federal regulations and “catastrophizing” about climate change.

Obermuller spoke glowingly about speculative new oil and gas technology, and the possibility of discovering new reserves in Wyoming, as reason to believe his industry would be alive and well in the next 50 years. He disputed the claim that his industry knows the location of all the underground oil and natural gas in Wyoming, positing that the Powder River basin, a geological feature in northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana that is already the biggest producer of coal in the U.S., remains ripe for more oil and gas exploration. 

Innovations in drilling are close to making even larger amounts of oil and gas accessible with lower surface disturbances, he continued. “Our capacity for innovation is limited by how few of us there are, and the aggregate limited time we all have to do the work of innovation,” he said. Obermuller announced that an oil and gas well in Wyoming was the highest producing well in all of the U.S. last year, leading the room to break out in enthusiastic applause.

As the oil and gas industry’s foil, Obermuller conjured a familiar boogeyman in the Cowboy State: rules imposed from Washington D.C. New federal regulations are “coming fast and furious,” he said, and standing in the way of Wyoming’s drilling future. “Federal policies should promote, not restrict, hydrocarbon development on public lands that offer the most environmentally sustainable production,” he said. And the state should prioritize implementing technologies that will help make that happen, he continued. “The state policy should promote, not restrict, innovations in emissions control and carbon management that build upon our legacy industry,” he said.

Wyoming, and perhaps the rest of the U.S., are needlessly “catastrophizing the so-called climate crisis,” Obermuller said. The behavior “results in policy changes crafted from fear,” he said, “the fear of unavoidable impending environmental doom, or the fear of technological advances that help us deal with environmental impacts like carbon capture and storage.” 

The next panelist, Mike Nasi, an environmental and energy law partner at the legal firm Jackson Walker, gave a fiery 30-minute speech on the future of Wyoming’s coal industry, which has experienced a steep decline in demand in the last decade. Nasi pledged to challenge the new federal regulations announced last week, calling April 25 “black Thursday.” The rules, which require coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to “control 90 percent of their carbon pollution” and reduce waste contaminants in wastewater and groundwater, were “four of the worst rules ever finalized by the federal government,” he said.

“We can’t allow the EPA to cut the throat of a hydrocarbon industry, with the edge of the envelope they’re pushing,” he said. Carbon capture and renewable energy will be necessary in the future, he argued, but the new regulations take emissions standards too far. If anything, Wyoming should be “building new coal” generation capacity to meet rising demand and preserve reliability, he said, to a smattering of applause from the audience.

On Thursday, 27 states, including Wyoming, sued the EPA over its new power plant regulations. 

ExxonMobil is “definitely looking to expand our operations in Wyoming,” said Emily Luomala, an environmental projects advisor at the company, which plans to open a large carbon capture facility in southwest Wyoming next year. Capturing carbon would help the state maintain its traditional energy industries in more ways than one, as a portion of the carbon it captures from the burning of fossil fuels would be used for enhanced oil recovery that helps wells produce more oil. The company expects its carbon capture facility to generate “cascading beneficial effects on local employment [and] tax revenue ” Luomala said. Executives from other carbon capture and pipeline companies also spoke glowingly about the future of the technology.

But Deuter, of the Powder River Resource Council, was dismayed to see so much attention devoted to oil, gas, coal, carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery. Doing so, “instead of focusing on renewables, is not a wise use of Wyoming’s resources,” she said.

Renewable Energy Gets a Seat at the Table

While panelists from fossil fuel companies often thanked legislators for creating a welcoming fiscal and political environment for their industries, and encouraged them to keep doing so, speakers on the renewable energy panel appeared to stump for their right to exist in Wyoming. 

In one of the last panels, in front of about half the number of people that were at the previous day’s gathering, executives from companies with sizable renewable energy investments and leaders from communities that have benefitted from renewable energy spoke at length about how Wyoming could do more to foster clean energy in Wyoming. 

There are 1,530 wind turbines in Wyoming, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. In Colorado, whose wind resource is not considered as strong as Wyoming’s there are almost twice that number. And there is only one utility scale solar farm in Wyoming. 

Ryan Fitzpatrick, executive director of development at NextEra Energy, told the audience that Wyoming lost out on a chance to secure half a billion dollars in future tax revenue because it was cheaper for a company to build just south of its border in Colorado. 

“We actually have to overcome about $4 per megawatt hour tax treatment in Wyoming versus Colorado,” he said, making it more difficult for companies to keep the costs of building in Wyoming low.

If the state is not careful, “it could really drive renewable energy out of Wyoming,” Burrows, of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, said. 

The panelists were the only ones asked if they envision a future where renewables work together with fossil fuels in the state’s energy economy. “For Wyoming to continue to grow, remain an energy leader and meet the constantly rising demand, we must remain competitive and welcome all sources of energy,” said Chris Brown, president of Powering Up Wyoming, a clean energy lobbying company. 

In communities where the wind industry has prospered, “it has raised our standard of living,” said Terry Weickum, mayor of Rawlins. During the pandemic, tax revenue from wind projects in Carbon County, where Rawlins is located, helped the city balance its budget, he said.

Some in the audience were heartened to see renewables play such a big role at this year’s energy conference. “I’ve been to this conference each time,” said Burrows. “Each time I’ve been more impressed by it. We still have more work to do—we’re not there yet—but we’re moving in the right direction.” 

This spring, the Wyoming Energy Authority awarded about $10 million in Energy Matching Funds to two separate projects: a mining operation for nickel and cobalt, elements needed for the energy transition, and an oil recovery, carbon sequestration and hydrogen production proposal. The energy authority, which has spent over $65 million of its $150 million in taxpayer-funded energy matching funds, has yet to award funding to a wind or solar project.