This article originally appeared at WyoFile.

Having recently cleared key legal and permitting hurdles, developers are slated to begin construction of two major high-voltage transmission lines connecting Wyoming to several states in the West. When completed, the Gateway South and TransWest Express transmission lines will open the door to a major expansion of wind energy development in the Cowboy State, industry officials say.

“The TransWest Express project opens the ability for Wyoming wholesale electricity supplies to reach new markets, like southern California, Arizona and Nevada, that the state is not directly serving today,” Power Company of Wyoming Communications Director Kara Choquette said.

The $3 billion, 732-mile long TransWest Express transmission line will transport electricity from Power Company of Wyoming’s Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project in south-central Wyoming, as well as other potential new wind energy facilities. Situated in Carbon County, the project’s 900 wind turbines with a total capacity of 3,000 megawatts will be the largest onshore wind energy facility in the United States.

After years of negotiations, TransWest Express LLC recently secured a right-of-way agreement with a large private landowner in western Colorado. Construction of the TransWest Express transmission line could begin as early as 2023, according to company officials. TransWest Express LLC and Power Company of Wyoming are both subsidiaries of Anschutz Corp. 

Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway-owned PacifiCorp received “certificates of public convenience and necessity” from the Wyoming Public Service Commission on May 10 for its Gateway South and a segment of its Gateway West lines. Both are part of PacifiCorp’s larger Energy Gateway transmission expansion project to add more than 2,000 miles of high-voltage power lines connecting Wyoming wind energy to five other western states in PacifiCorp’s service territory.

Construction will begin this summer, according to PacifiCorp. Both Gateway South and Gateway West “Segment D.1” are slated to be operational in late 2024. 

Shift from coal to wind

The added transmission capacity and increased number of “on-ramps” and “off-ramps” that the transmission lines would provide to Wyoming and the Western grid set the stage for a major buildout of wind turbines in the state. When completed, that extra capacity and interconnectivity would also provide PacifiCorp — and possibly others — the ability to retire coal-fired power units in the state by meeting several new state-level power delivery and reliability requirements, according to University of Wyoming energy economist Rob Godby.

“When you have a more flexible system, it’s just less likely that you need coal,” Godby said. “You can rely on a more flexible set of generation alternatives, and that old fossil fuel backbone [coal-fired power] is less relevant.”

Adding interstate transmission capacity — and therefore boosting the ability to move power in and out of Wyoming as needed — is integral to PacifiCorp’s plans to meet the state’s reliability standards, according to PacifiCorp spokesperson David Eskelsen.

“The Gateway South and Segment D.1 transmission projects were modeled in the 2021 [integrated resource plan] as key to system reliability as the energy transition is expected to continue,” Eskelsen told WyoFile.

PacifiCorp says it will retire 14 of its coal-fired power units across several states, including several in Wyoming by 2030, and a total of 19 by 2040. The regulated utility plans to add more than 3,700 MW of new wind power by 2040 throughout its six-state region, including in Wyoming.

Wyoming wind

Wyoming has some of the best wind resources in the continental U.S., according to Jonathan Naughton, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Wind Energy Research Center at the University of Wyoming. Several regions of the state — mostly in the southeast — have “wind capacity factors” of more than 50%, compared to 35% in other interior states.

“It means that the turbines that they put up are running at full capacity more often,” Naughton said.

Wyoming wind also tends to be more consistent during winter months and during evening hours throughout the year, providing a balance to power demands in other western states. When solar power generation drops off in the evenings in California, for example, Wyoming wind can backfill the power supply. The same dynamic applies between eastern Wyoming and the Colorado Front Range.

“There’s some attractive things about combining solar and wind from Wyoming,” Naughton said.  “And if you build out a really robust transmission system, it’s easy to move power around, and it solves a lot of these issues with variability.”

Wyoming’s electrical export

Wyoming exports about three-fifths of the electricity generated in the state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A supermajority of Wyoming’s total power generation comes from coal-fired power plants.

But the state’s electrical generation profile is rapidly changing.

Coal accounted for 97% of the state’s power generation in 2003, according to EIA. There was a lull in wind energy development in the 2010s, but since 2019 the state has more than doubled its wind energy generation capacity.  Now at more than 3,000 MW, wind accounts for nearly a third of the state’s total electrical generation capacity.

Much more wind power is on the way. Wyoming could see an additional 6,000 MW of new wind power capacity by 2030, according to those close to the industry. Although not every wind power proposal will come to fruition, the inevitability of major interstate transmission projects connecting Wyoming wind resources to western states will help shift the state from a majority coal power exporter to a majority wind power exporter, UW’s Godby said.

“The reality is that [more electrical transmission] creates both the capacity to develop more renewable energy, and in different places,” Godby said.

Meanwhile, PacifiCorp has dialed back electrical generation output from some coal-burning units, including at Jim Bridger, making more room for Wyoming-originating wind energy on existing interstate electrical transmission lines.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Greenlit powerlines forecast Wyoming wind energy boom is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story is part of a WyoFile series examining climate change and what it means for the quality of life in Wyoming. It is supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s journalism fellowship program. Read about Wyoming climate trends here, and read about a Wyoming coal community in transition here.

Gillette and Campbell County appear to be bursting with economic activity despite a series of coal company bankruptcies, mine layoffs and a forecast for more of the same. 

There have been fewer than 100 homes on the market in Campbell County for several months, and builders can’t find enough workers to meet soaring demand for new homes, locals report.

On any given weekend, the new Energy Capital Sports Complex is teeming with thousands of children, parents and onlookers taking in the excitement of youth football, baseball or soccer games — depending on the season. It’s also the future location for a new tournament-sized swimming pool.

Youth sports, local leaders say, is part of the community’s plan to bring in more outside revenue and help diversify the economy to prepare for a future with fewer mining jobs and lower coal revenue.

Gillette and Campbell County are best known as the epicenter of American coal, supplying about 40% of the nation’s coal for electrical generation.

But it’s also a destination for visitors from across the country and around the world.

“It’s a lot of people coming in here and staying at hotels, eating at restaurants — that kind of stuff,” Campbell County Commissioner Rusty Bell said. “When people come from around the state they say, ‘Well, how are you guys doing? They expect that we’re [struggling]. … Campbell County is growing.”

Cam-Plex, the county’s sprawling multi-event complex, continues to draw crowds throughout the year, hosting everything from theatre productions to horse-handling exhibitions, rodeos, vintage camper rallies and even international conventions such as the Pyrotechnics Guild International. Plans are underway to build a new outdoor amphitheater in anticipation of the International Pathfinders Camporee convention in 2024, which is expected to draw more than 50,000 attendees.

The county’s population is 46,300.

Gillette Mayor Louise Carter-King said she often hears the same reaction from people who come to town for sports tournaments and other events — they expect to see a struggling economy.

“We don’t have empty buildings in town,” Carter-King said. “When people come here they think Main Street is going to be empty but people are fighting to get buildings. I just sold my building downtown, and it’s just wonderful.”

Investing mineral wealth into sports and events facilities has not only helped Campbell county attract outside dollars, it also plays to the community’s deeply ingrained sports culture. 

Such bets are far from a sure thing, however. They can work against local government budgets if the facilities come with a large amount of debt or present a major maintenance cost, said Kristin Smith, researcher for the Montana-based nonprofit Headwaters Economics.

Nor are such investments likely to be enough on their own. Replacing the tax revenue base that coal has historically provided — accounting for more than half Campbell County’s assessed valuation — will require adding many different businesses and industries, Smith said. And doing that will require a state and regional effort.

“The scale of the transition, from a fiscal point of view, is beyond what any one community or county can handle,” Smith said. “There is not a single industry — sports and events or otherwise — that will be able to generate revenue like coal has for Campbell County.”

This is not lost on local leaders who say they’re collaborating on a still-developing multi-pronged strategy to diversify the economy. It includes helping the industrial service industry — built around decades of coal, oil and natural gas extraction — expand into manufacturing, Bell said. The community is also working to develop a new carbon technology sector it hopes will maintain some demand for local mines and add value to coal.

“We’re not just a coal town,” Bell said. “We’re trying to change that four-letter-word ‘coal’ into carbon. I know it sounds crazy, but make coal carbon neutral.”

Perhaps the most prominent impact on Wyoming of the changing climate is how it’s already changing lives and economies that have been tied to fossil fuel extraction for decades. As an energy supplier to the nation and the world, Wyoming and its residents are largely at the mercy of forces that drive fossil fuel policy elsewhere. That reality is forcing the state, and particularly communities like Campbell County, to think about ways they can diversify and play to their other strengths.

WyoFile visited with leaders in Campbell County to learn how a vision for a new economy is taking shape.

The haves and have nots

Some worry that the appearance of a bustling economy in Gillette and Campbell County obscures underlying economic vulnerabilities and long-standing inequities.

The growing sports and events sector draws a lot of people from out of town who spend money at restaurants and hotels, and the facilities add to the quality of life for locals, Council of Community Services Executive Director Mikel Scott said. “But they’re mostly supporting service jobs.

“You would assume, then, that those essential workers would start to make more money,” Scott said. “But they don’t. And housing costs keep going up while wages stay the same, and access to health care and mental health care get cut.”

Cuts to mental health and substance abuse programs forced the closure of the Greenhouse this summer in Gillette, a supervised group home for those experiencing severe mental illness and homelessness. Before the pandemic hit, community service programs were already experiencing a withdrawal of support from coal companies, which had long been bulwark community partners.

Though federal pandemic relief funds have helped fill a gap in needs, Scott said she worries about what will happen when that support runs out.

“People are still going to need help with rent, utility payments and help with medical, dental — things like that,” Scott said. “We’re all really nervous about what that’s going to look like for us and for the low-income folks in town.”

The most reliable bellwether for what that future might look like, for now, remains coal and oil production.

Economic indicators

Powder River Basin mines produced 230 million tons of coal in 2020 compared to 496 million tons in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. So far this year coal production is up about 20%, and oil is enjoying a modest rebound from 2020.

However, Arch Resources — which changed its name from Arch Coal in 2020 — plans to close two coal mines in the county, the first, Coal Creek, in 2022. No closure date has been set for Black Thunder.

Together, the two mines employ 1,070 miners, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration data. Coal Creek produced 2.1 million tons of coal in 2020, while Black Thunder produced 50 million tons.

Industry researchers say several other mining companies in the Powder River Basin remain vulnerable to bankruptcy and that the industry is in permanent decline.

Meantime, Campbell County is enjoying an increase in revenue from sales, use and lodging taxes — driven in part by events and visitor traffic. That revenue has increased from $30 million in 2017 to $38.3 million in 2019, according to Wyoming Economic Analysis Division data.

But it pales in comparison with the county’s main revenue driver: property taxes on industry and mineral production. Coal accounted for about 51.6% of the county’s assessed value in 2021, compared to 58.6% in 2017, according to the Campbell County Treasurer’s Office.

The county’s assessed valuation cratered by $850 million from 2020 to 2021 to its lowest level since 2004. Though that year-to-year downturn is largely attributed to the pandemic shutdown of 2020, it demonstrates the outsized role mineral extraction has on the local economy.

That level of reliance on a single industry that is forecast to undergo a dramatic contraction over the next decade paints a potentially bleak picture for the community’s economic future, according to economist Smith.

“I think our rural energy communities need to get as creative as possible in thinking about how to address the need for replacement revenue and also build community wealth,” Smith said.

Planning for the future

Gillette and Campbell County have avoided taking on a lot of debt for their state-of-the-art sports and events facilities — a potential pitfall that plagues many rural communities, according to Smith.

The recreation center, as well as all facilities at Cam-Plex, are paid for, and the county “has no debt,” Campbell County Administrative Director Carol Seeger said. Both Gillette and Campbell County maintain funds for upkeep while setting aside some savings.

Mayor Carter-King said Gillette College is another primary investment in the community’s future, and the local sports culture played a role in a vote to separate the campus from the Sheridan-based Northern Wyoming Community College District.

It wasn’t the single factor, Carter-King said, but when the college district’s board of trustees in Sheridan — which oversee the district’s college campuses in Sheridan, Buffalo and Gillette — proposed cutting athletic programs, it spurred many in Campbell County to vote to create its own community college district.

“I don’t know what they were thinking,” she said.

Aside from maintaining athletics at the college, plans also include expanding workforce training and the college’s nursing program, Carter-King said.

Meantime, community leaders say they’re planning for a future when events and, particularly, coal might not provide the kind of jobs or tax revenue to support a quality of life that many have enjoyed for decades. They hope to maintain the large industrial tax base by adding more manufacturing and technology as the extraction side of the equation diminishes.

Campbell County is applying for $11.3 million in federal stimulus grants for its proposed Pronghorn Industrial Park on 250 acres it purchased from the state several years ago. It already has $2.8 million in-hand as a cash match.

The industrial park would cater to the emerging carbon technology sector that the county and state have been fostering for years. Campbell County is already home to the Integrated Test Center, which hosted the Carbon XPrize competition, and the Wyoming Innovation Center is now under construction. The vision is to use the testing facilities to advance technologies for capturing carbon from coal for both underground sequestration and to use as a building block for coal-derived materials.

Although those endeavors qualify under various federal stimulus programs for coal communities, there are critics. The technologies, and a suite of recently-passed legislation in Wyoming to support them, amount to a lot of false hope, according to Greg Findley of Lander, who researches climate and energy policy.

“Carbon capture technology is extremely expensive and it has failed miserably at the two power plants in North America where it has been tested,” Findley wrote in a recent op-ed.

But state and local leaders are not deterred. There’s already a handful of clients eager to set up operations at the future Pronghorn Industrial Park, they say.

“I think things like [coal-based carbon technology] are long term,” Carter-King said. “That is going to take a while. But that value-added [component] … it looks like it could be an average of $600 a ton” compared to $12 per ton for the raw coal being shipped out today.

“Hopefully, in that process,” Carter-King continued, “we can employ as many [people]. They’ll just have to have different skill sets.”

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Wyoming’s Gillette and Campbell County plan for post-coal economy is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story is part of a WyoFile series examining climate change and what it means for the quality of life in Wyoming. It is supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s journalism fellowship program. Read about Wyoming climate trends here, and read about a Wyoming coal community in transition here.

Extreme temperatures broke records in June, setting the stage for an unusually hot, dry and smoky summer. Conditions were severe enough to inspire many Wyoming residents to take stock of what appear to be changing climate patterns in the state. 

Anglers report that lower streamflows and warmer stream temperatures — a threat to trout fisheries — seem to be arriving earlier in the summer. Cyanobacterial blooms appear to be more common too, and ranchers lament the continuing drought and what feels like increasingly unpredictable seasonal conditions.

These anecdotal observations align with more than 100 years of Wyoming-specific data, according to J.J. Shinker, professor at the University of Wyoming Department of Geology and Geophysics.

“While increases in temperature don’t appear to be reflected in significant changes in precipitation, the temperature increases are impacting water resources through early snow melt, faster runoff and greater evaporation at the surface, all of which enhance drought,” Shinker said.

To better understand how climate is changing in the state, Shinker said, it’s important to consider Wyoming’s place in the world and its wide-ranging topography — from lowlands at 3,101 feet elevation to high peaks of 13,809 feet. 

Perhaps the most significant climate trend in Wyoming is that its highest elevations are warming fastest.

That’s important, Shrinker said, because less than 8% of Wyoming’s surface — 10,000 feet in elevation and higher — serves as a snow and glacial “waterbank,” and a primary driver of annual spring runoff. And spring runoff helps drive large portions of Wyoming’s biological health and economy.

Intense springtime warming and increasing variability in both temperature and precipitation are also critical trends. 

The annual mean springtime temperature in the Upper North Platte Valley, for example, has increased by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit since 1920, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. That’s more than triple the global average increase of 1 degree Fahrenheit. That rate of warming has major implications for a watershed that millions of people depend on.

In other words, when and where temperatures are increasing most, and when and where precipitation falls and melts, shapes the pulse of life and commerce in Wyoming. And that pulse is changing in ways that indicate significant disruptions.

With the help of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative and the University of Wyoming’s Department of Geology & Geophysics, WyoFile examined Wyoming climate data to learn how climate change is playing out in the state.

Wyoming trends

The statewide annual mean temperature increased 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit  from 1920 to 2020, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

What’s more consequential to Wyoming residents, though, are the geographic- and seasonal-specific trends. That’s because temperature significantly drives water availability in arid Wyoming — both generally throughout the year and more specifically during spring runoff. And water availability defines much of Wyoming’s natural and human-built systems.

Underlying the annual mean temperature change of +2.2 degrees Fahrenheit are more granular changes. Temperatures are increasing every month and every season of the year — and at different rates.

Wyoming’s winters, for example, are warming at an alarming pace.

The annual mean temperature trend for Wyoming’s winter season since 1920 is +2.8 degrees Fahrenheit — higher than the annual mean temperature rise. This increases the likelihood of rain-on-snow events at high elevations, which erodes the longevity of high-elevation snowpack.

In the context of water availability, that plays directly into Wyoming’s critical spring season.

Among Wyoming’s seasons, the annual springtime mean temperature trend is steepest: +2.9 degrees Fahrenheit. This results in earlier and accelerated melt, which presents myriad changes and challenges.

Not only does it increase the likelihood of springtime flooding and surface-to-atmosphere evaporation, it also means that irrigated crop and ranching operations have a shrinking time window to benefit from spring runoff. 

Reservoirs and irrigation systems have only so much capacity and work most efficiently with an ample and steady supply of melt runoff. A more intense and shorter-lived spring runoff may overwhelm irrigation and storage capacities, meaning the state can’t make beneficial use of its water.

These dynamics are already at play in south-central Wyoming. The rate of annual mean springtime temperature change for the Upper North Platte River region around Saratoga is +3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The result is, on average, the snowmelt starting approximately 13 days earlier than it did a century ago, according to research by the University of Wyoming.

“When spring runoff comes fast and short like that, it’s there and then it’s gone,” Wyoming Water Association President Jodee Pring said. “[Irrigators] are not prepared for anything like that. So I think we need to think about changing irrigation methods. Some of that is the timing of when they might plant and when they may harvest, because I think a lot of [irrigation and ag practices] are built on tradition.”

Although Wyoming’s summer and fall seasons are warming at slower rates, those changes still threaten to compound the effects of warming winter and spring seasons. The annual mean temperature increase is +1.6 degrees Fahrenheit for the summer season and +1.5 degrees Fahrenheit for the fall.

Absent ample summertime rainfall, reservoirs might not be replenished for mid- and late-summer irrigation. The combination of warmer springtime and summertime temperatures also contributes to more evaporative loss and increases the likelihood of lower and warmer streamflows earlier in the summer — a threat to aquatic life, including Wyoming’s trout fisheries.

The trend has major implications for the Upper North Platte River Valley where its impact to water resources pose a threat to an economy rooted in agriculture and tourism. It also poses a threat to municipalities, businesses and agricultural operations throughout the 350-mile-long Platte River drainage in Wyoming, as well as for downstream users in Nebraska.

Where temperature trends are most consequential

Wyoming’s latitude and relatively high- and wide-ranging elevation are major factors when it comes to where warming temperature trends and variability are most consequential. 

Even slight temperature trends at high elevations can play an outsized role for natural and human systems for much of the state.

Even during an exceptionally cold year, 2019, the temperatures at Wyoming’s highest elevations stood out as anomalous against a 30-year average, showing warmer temperatures than lower elevations that year. The same applies to 2012, Wyoming’s warmest year in recent history, revealing a persistently steeper trend in warming at high elevations.  

Wyoming precipitation

Variability and unpredictability have always been the hallmarks of precipitation in Wyoming and the interior Rocky Mountain Region, UW’s Shinker said. There’s very little seasonality for precipitation here, with the general exception for winter snow accumulations at high elevation.

Broken out by season, the annual mean precipitation trends over the past century are a mix of slight increases and decreases: winter, -0.04 inches; spring, +0.3; summer, -0.57; fall, +0.2. 

The data, which appears inconsequential, makes it difficult to project future trends.

However, there’s a clear increase in springtime precipitation variability, even compared to the increasing variability throughout the rest of the year. Combined with rising springtime temperatures, it increases the likelihood of severe springtime conditions, including dangerous late blizzards and flooding.

It’s also important to understand that an increase in variability and extreme conditions can have major implications for a state where life is generally dialed into seasonal patterns and relatively dry conditions.

For example, 2019 was exceptionally wet — the 17th wettest on record in the state — but came during a long period of drought. Although it was some measure of relief, it also wreaked havoc for some ag operations.

“When an extremely wet year came along it [overwhelmed a lot of] infrastructure,” said Rhonda Brandt, Wyoming state statistician for the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. “The animals couldn’t go to their normal grazing places because they were flooded out. The ranchers, they couldn’t do their normal rotation through their pastures because things were coming ripe at different times. There was more disruption by that one wet year than by the last 50 years of dryness.” 

Climate trends are also moving toward more intense and longer-lasting droughts in Wyoming.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index uses temperature and precipitation data to estimate relative dryness. The trend over the past century indicates that Wyoming’s climate is moving toward more persistent “moderate drought” conditions than in the past.

With continued warming, and if there is little to no increase in precipitation, the trend could escalate further, to more persistent “severe drought” in the future, according to the PDSI.

Beginning the conversation

Climate trends and their potential impacts could touch many aspects of life in Wyoming. 

Wildfires have already become more intense and more frequent. Warming trends also increase threats of invasive insect, plant and aquatic species. Changes already being measured, and felt, indicate transformation for all manner of habitat that supports wildlife, human health and economic activity. 

With those implications in mind, the time has come to start a statewide conversation, many say. 

“Let’s have a conversation about what we can do and how we can start preparing ourselves,” Pring of the Wyoming Water Association said. “What are we missing? What do we need to do, and what do state agencies need to do to educate people? Are we not publishing the right data? Is it too hard to understand?”

Existing data and ongoing analysis must be compiled and made readily accessible in ways that Wyoming stakeholders can understand it, UW’s Shinker said.

“A climate assessment, led by a state climatologist, would be an important step in planning for Wyoming’s climate future,” Shinker said. “Assessing changing climate on Wyoming’s environment and economy is imperative for people in the state to prepare for future impacts.” 

So far, there’s no effort to conduct a comprehensive Wyoming-specific climate assessment, and Wyoming has been without a State Climatologist for a decade.

A state climatologist “is charged with making sure we’ve got that reliable data and then being able to serve that up to people to help them come to the table and have those collaborative conversations,” Pring said. “If people don’t even have a base of where everybody starts and has the same information, the conversation isn’t going to go very far.”

While there are no plans to fill the vacant State Climatologist position, a group of University of Wyoming faculty has applied to the National Science Foundation for financial support to build upon the Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment.

“Our aim is to develop the resources at UW to help communities across the state adapt and address the various challenges tied to the climate and related economic transition that is underway,” said Bryan Shuman, director of the University of Wyoming-National Park Service Research Center in Grand Teton National Park, a lead author of the Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Wyoming climate data holds ominous clues about life, economy is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story is part of a WyoFile series examining climate change and what it means for the quality of life in Wyoming. It is supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s journalism fellowship program. Read about Wyoming climate trends here, and read about a Wyoming coal community in transition here.

We talk a lot about the weather in Wyoming because, like it does in any place occupied by humans, it unites us. Talking about a changing climate in Wyoming, however, can be more difficult. 

But when the conversation moves past politics and policy, residents from all walks of life report changes that concern them. 

This summer, for example, anglers across the state saw lower streamflows and increasing water temperatures diminish fishing opportunities beginning in July rather than late August. This fall, ranchers faced the difficult decision to reduce herd sizes or pay top-dollar for supplemental hay as they prepared for the winter.

Even some skeptics of human-caused climate change said this summer’s extreme conditions felt like the continuation of dramatic shifts in climate patterns they’ve observed over their lifetimes.

“I can’t say cause and effect,” Campbell County rancher Eric Barlow, who also serves in the state legislature, said. “But I can say that, certainly, [there are] trends that I just don’t quite understand or [they] don’t seem to follow the tradition, you know, from generation to generation.”

WyoFile traveled the state and talked to Wyoming residents about the changes they’re observing on a landscape that they love and depend on, and what those changes might mean to their Wyoming lifestyle.

Changes in agriculture

Few residents are as attuned to the seasonal and cyclical pulse of Wyoming’s climate than those who raise livestock and grow crops. Their livelihoods and identities — going back generations — are intrinsically tied to how the climate’s rhythms play out on a landscape.

And even with Wyoming’s traditional agricultural challenges  — harsh weather, limited water, poor soils and volatile weather — there are noticeable changes, many say.

Thayne Gray has been reading through records kept by his father and grandfather on the Warbonnet Ranch outside Moorcroft, he said. Since 1985, the family has instituted an intensive rotational grazing program on its collection of moderately high-and-dry pastures with great success. 

Crafted to accommodate the region’s once-typical weather patterns, those practices are, with increasing frequency, not enough to keep up with changing conditions.

In his reading, he said, Gray discovered that the cycles his ancestors recorded don’t reflect those he’s experienced over the past decade or more. Much has changed in his lifetime on the ranch.

“We used to have three to four years of common weather before the cycle would change from a wet cycle to a dry cycle,” Gray said. “Now, you’ll have one of the wettest years — a great wet year — next to the driest the very next year. So, I don’t know what’s causing that, but it’s just something I noticed.”

By September, cattle on the Warbonnet Ranch had already grazed out every summer and winter pasture due to continuing drought conditions made worse by unusually high temperatures. Gray had to pay top-dollar, competing with ranchers across much of the West, for several truckloads of hay to prepare for the winter.

Gray has also noticed what seems to be an emerging snow phenomenon: a warm spell follows a heavy snow. That initiates a thaw, then it freezes tight to the soil, making it almost impossible for cattle to break through the crust for forage.

“I thought it was an anomaly, but it seems to be becoming more consistent with how our winters are coming along,” Gray said.

The Barlow Ranch is bisected by Dead Horse Creek, a tributary to the Powder River, famously described as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” There’s a bit of truth to the aphorism. The river commonly runs dry enough by late August that cattle easily plod across the mucky riverbed without getting stuck.

That opportunity came even earlier this year. 

Record breaking triple-digit temperatures baked the landscape in June when, traditionally, moderate rainfall and cool nights curb the heat. Rancher Eric Barlow, a veterinarian and Republican Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives, lost seven yak calves that were born in June when temperatures reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

“The bum yak calf we have is also a product of that day and the confusion and heat stress the entire herd experienced,” Barlow said.

The cattle, sheep and yak operation relies entirely on artesian springs and drilled wells to water the livestock. On good years, ephemeral creeks are a bonus, Barlow said, providing springtime flows from snowmelt. There are no irrigated pastures, so the operation is entirely dependent on “optimal” precipitation events.

Those optimal events are becoming less common, he said.

“I really do think we’ve seen a change in precipitation patterns,” Barlow said. “Part of the result of that is less reliable forage production year to year, and the timing of the forage.”

Barlow reduced both sheep and cattle numbers this year, he said, and still invested in several truckloads of supplemental feed hay for the upcoming winter.

The changes he’s noticed in his lifetime on the ranch can be summed up as more extremes and less predictability, he said, which makes it difficult to adapt from year to year.

“We do have a hope that, next year, we’ll have whatever normal is,” Barlow said. 

Changes to fisheries

When Jeff Streeter began working as a fishing guide on the North Platte River near Saratoga in the 1970s, the river ran full and cold throughout the summer, supporting one of the world’s most sought-after trout fisheries and attracting high-paying anglers.

That hasn’t been the case during the past decade or so, he said.

By mid-July this year, higher-than-average temperatures in the Upper North Platte Valley, combined with years of persistently lower runoff, had already gummed the river with thick moss. The streamflow was so low that fishing guides couldn’t float clients on long stretches of the river, and late-day water temperatures were too warm for trout to survive being caught and released.

“These river systems are stressed when they don’t receive [ample] flows,” Streeter said in July while gearing up for a morning of fishing on the Encampment River, which flows into the North Platte.

Warmer stream temperatures coming earlier in the summer have prompted more frequent “hoot owl restrictions” — regulations designed to improve fish survival by stopping catch-and-release trout fishing in the heat of the afternoon. Anglers must hit the water earlier in the day, if at all, during these conditions.

The result is a diminished trout fishery and a hit to the local economy, which relies heavily on summer tourists drawn to fisheries in the valley, Streeter said.

Irrigators, who still pull what they can from the river, also must cope with the higher temperatures and lower precipitation. Resource conservation works best when fishermen and local ag producers collaborate, and there’s a proven track-record for those types of efforts throughout the state, said Streeter, who worked many years as a Trout Unlimited conservation advocate. But the continuing human and climate pressures in the Upper North Platte Valley threaten to erode that type of cooperation, he said.

While sitting on the Encampment River’s bank, Streeter also lamented changes overhead. More intense wildfire seasons have resulted in smoke-clogged summer skies.

“We should be very cautious not to attribute every change and every weather event to climate change,” Streeter said. “But on the other hand, we should not be able to — in one lifetime — we shouldn’t be able to feel a difference in the climate. And we do. And that’s worrisome to me.”

Changes on the sagebrush landscape

Master falconer Vahé Alaverdian moved from Los Angeles to live amongst the sagebrush and vast expanses of public lands south of Pinedale in the Upper Green River Basin.

He loves to hunt greater sage grouse with the aid of a bird dog and falcon — the ultimate sporting challenge, he said. Sage grouse and the wide-open sagebrush basinlands teeming with wildlife also provide the perfect opportunity to train his falcons. His company, Falcon Force, uses trained raptors to control nuisance birds for mostly West-Coast clients that include vineyards, blueberry and cherry growers, theme parks, golf courses and airports.

In addition to its utility, Alaverdian considers the sagebrush landscape a paradise of sorts.

“This is my shrine,” he said early one morning in September while sitting on the tailgate of his pickup in the middle of a sagebrush sea. A falcon perched on one gloved hand.

And the landscape that he loves and depends on is in duress, he said. Alaverdian attributes the changes he sees on the sage-steppe landscape to drought. A persistent lack of moisture results in stunted growth of vegetation and a diminishing bounty of small and large insects, he said. That threatens a cascading effect on wildlife that depend on the sagebrush habitat. Eagles, for example, seem more aggressive for lack of their normal diet of small prey like rabbits.

“My falcons that I’m flying here often fall prey to immature eagles,” Alaverdian said. “And [the eagles are] trying to survive. I can’t blame them. They become a major danger factor for what we do.”

Wyoming’s sagebrush habitat is vital to sage grouse and song birds, as well as pronghorn, mule deer and other game. Persistent warming and drier conditions here can have profound effects on all manner of Wyoming wildlife.

“The drought is just tearing the desert up,” Mike Burd of Green River said. “[Wildlife doesn’t] have the [quality] habitat out there that they used to have. I’ve seen it, and it’s hard to watch.” 

Burd, a retired trona miner, grew up hunting and fishing in Western Wyoming — along the banks of the Green River, high in the Wind River Range and down in the vast basins of the Red Desert. Rivers and streams seem to have less flow earlier in the season, he said, and a lot of animals — birds and ungulates — seem to be struggling.

“It’s been so gradual, [young people] don’t notice it,” Burd said. “But I’m in my 60s, and I have noticed it.” 

A changing climate threatens Wyoming’s outdoor culture, which is rich with traditions that help bond generations, Burd said. In addition to diminishing fishing and hunting opportunities, it’s small things, too, like campfire bans coming earlier in the summer. Campfires are where friends and family gather to tell stories — one of Burd’s most cherished traditions.

“My kids aren’t going to get to experience the Wyoming that I grew up in, and my grandchildren, surely not,” Burd said. “I hope I’m wrong. I really do hope I’m wrong. But I doubt it.”

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Wyoming residents observe a changing climate and quality of life is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Coal country is not without options. But coal’s long legacy of hope, promises and failure has instilled a political inertia that won’t soon be overcome.

The 28-year-old man clearly had opinions on the future of coal, but wouldn’t share them until out of earshot of a group of unemployed miners at a gas station in southern West Virginia.

“Economically, these coal fields are dying,” he said, adding that he personally was done with coal. He’d finished three years of college before going into the mines, and was considering going back to become a teacher.

That conversation took place in 1956. It was recounted by Howard B. Lee in his book, “Bloodletting in Appalachia,” a history of West Virginia’s mine wars. 

Central Appalachia has wrestled with decline ever since. It’s hard to see the end of coal when it’s been dying for 70 years. 

The industry appeared to have a longer life ahead in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, but the last decade has demonstrated otherwise. Yet despite a steady flow of data and warnings from experts, obscurity still exists, delaying a sense of urgency to prepare for drastic changes.

“Transition in Coal Country” is a collaboration of the Energy News Network and WyoFile, made possible by a grant from the Just Transition Fund. The series, reported by Mason Adams and Dustin Bleizeffer, examines how the declining coal industry presents immediate and long-term changes for coal communities in Wyoming and Appalachia, how those communities are coping with change, and what they might learn from each other in charting a path to a sustainable future beyond coal.

Read the rest of the series:
Part one: What’s next for coal country?
Part two: Coal country faces a healthcare crisis
Part three: Coal communities increasingly rely on federal health programs
Part four: How lax fiscal policy has left states flat-footed as mining declines
Part five: Coal country envisions paths forward in manufacturing, reclamation and renewables

In Wyoming, every bust has been followed by another boom in one fossil fuel or the other. Politicians promised voters that coal would drive wealth in Wyoming for generations to come. Now coal’s demise is met with consternation and confusion. Even as it downsizes, the Powder River Basin will remain the cheapest-to-mine thermal coal region in the U.S. with the potential to pick up new supply contracts as higher-cost thermal coal mines close elsewhere. Wyoming is expected to be the last U.S. thermal coal supplier standing in a permanently shrinking industry. 

“Seems like everybody is going on with their life,” said Mike Wandler, president of Gillette-based L&H Industrial, an international manufacturer that also serves the coal, oil and natural gas industries. “There’s still trucks flying off the lots, people are buying things, there’s not a big fire sale. I guess I would say I’ve seen it a lot worse than this. I’ve seen it where you couldn’t rent a U-Haul because everybody was loading them up and heading out. And that’s not happening right now.”

Both regions stand at a crossroads, faced with the decision to lay the groundwork for a post-coal economy or continue to lean into the fossil fuel-powered economic engine that propelled them for decades. 

As conventional wisdom goes, hope is not a strategy. The coal industry is still contracting in both regions despite the fact that coal’s political allies hold power on local and federal levels. 

In West Virginia, resort and coal baron Gov. Jim Justice and state lawmakers cut the thermal coal severance tax. And still.

“None of the promises that coal was coming back happened,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “There’s no turnaround. This is a structural decline.”

No off-ramps 

Appalachia produced the bulk of the nation’s coal before it began to fall off in the 1970s; it was surpassed by the Powder River Basin around the turn of the millennium. Along the way, central Appalachia faced a series of moments when it seemed it might diverge from its reliance on coal. 

The passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 marked a potential reset point — when the cost of cleaning up abandoned mines would be covered, and new regulations would ensure the reclamation of surface mines in the future. In retrospect, the law essentially normalized the more environmentally intensive techniques of mountaintop removal mining and handed the responsibility of enforcement to state regulators, who just as often worked to help the industry as watchdog it.

In 2013, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican and longtime friend of coal, endorsed an initiative to develop a new economy in eastern Kentucky just a year after he had blasted then-President Barack Obama’s so-called “war on coal.” Eastern Kentucky’s prospects have only grown bleaker as coal has continued to wane.

The 2019 miners’ blockade of a train carrying $1.4 million in coal for bankrupt operator Blackjewel seemed to mark yet another moment of cultural shift. Some of the miners went back to work for other coal companies, and one operator that received assets in Blackjewel’s bankruptcy has now filed for bankruptcy itself.

In Wyoming, Blackjewel’s sudden bankruptcy resulted in a months-long pause in the operation of Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines, which threw miners’ lives into chaos, but ultimately resulted in no permanent closure of major mining operations in Wyoming.

That lack of a clear rupture in Wyoming coal might contribute to the ongoing political inertia to plan for coal’s structural decline.

University of Wyoming economist Jason Shogren said that with every challenge to coal, Wyoming chose to increase its wager on the industry’s future.

“We knew this was coming 25-30 years ago,” Shogren said. “We knew that there was going to be a push on reducing fossil fuels for climate change with the Kyoto Protocol back in 1997, and people in the state just decided to run with it. They decided to play defense, and now that day is here.”

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon’s policy director, Renny MacKay, told WyoFile in a 2019 interview that the state is focused on the need for economic diversification, and it is prepared to help communities struggling with the downturn in coal. However, MacKay said, the governor makes an important distinction when it comes to discussions about communities facing the challenge of an energy transition. “We don’t really call it transition,” MacKay said, “because the communities aren’t looking to transition in Wyoming.”

Wyoming isn’t participating in policymaking that embraces a purposeful shift away from coal, MacKay said. It’s fighting against those forces.

In the Interior West, Wyoming is the only state with no renewable portfolio standard or goals for reducing carbon emissions other than Idaho, which already gets most of its electricity from hydropower. In January, Wyoming joined Montana in jointly petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Washington state’s regulatory roadblock to a proposed coal port expansion on the Columbia River — key to shipping more Powder River Basin coal to Asian markets. Gordon said he’ll continue pitching Wyoming coal to potential Asian buyers, supported by $1 million in Wyoming taxpayer dollars. 

Gordon signed into law a mandate forcing utilities to seek a third-party buyer for coal units in the state that they want to retire ahead of schedule. The state launched an investigation to challenge Rocky Mountain Power’s economic and market analysis used to justify its plans to speed up the retirement of coal-fired power plants.

Perhaps the biggest factor when it comes to efforts to transition, for both Wyoming and Appalachia, is whether voters will continue to endorse efforts to save coal or help coal-dependent communities move beyond it.

Transition tools

Wyoming has several resources at hand to help itself in the decline of coal. More immediate mitigating tools include decommissioning and jobs programs among utilities that plan to retire coal-fired power units in the state, as well as coal mine reclamation — a potential $2 billion endeavor in the Powder River Basin. Wyoming also has more than $20 billion in savings and investments — some of which could be used to more directly help coal communities. 

“If we’re thinking about hard times and any kind of insurance package to help smooth out the income stream over half a century, a lot of attention should be paid to the sovereign wealth fund,” Shogren said. “If people in Wyoming were more aware of what they actually have in [state savings and investments], we might be more aggressive in how we choose to invest those resources.” 

A recent analysis suggests the state can give itself more leeway in how it invests its sovereign wealth. “Everyone agrees that the downturn in the minerals industry is bad news for Wyoming,” author Ben Gose wrote in a series published by WyoFile. “But Wyoming’s weak investment returns also represent a significant — and rarely discussed — reason the state is going to have to cut spending or raise taxes.”

States actively seeking coal transition strategies, such as Colorado, are looking toward securitization. It’s a refinancing tool that can help reduce the ratepayer impact of retiring coal units early. Portions of savings from securitization go toward renewable energy and community development projects, which can in turn attract additional funds from the federal government.

Grassroots nonprofit groups such as the Powder River Basin Resource Council (which hosted a series of four webinars this summer focusing on communities in transition), Appalachian Voices and others have generated a font of ideas for assisting communities in transition from coal.

In late June, a range of local, tribal and labor leaders from coal communities across America endorsed the National Economic Transition (NET) Platform, developed through a process led by the Just Transition Fund. (The Just Transition Fund also provided a grant to fund this series.) The platform outlines principles and processes, but largely leaves specific details to be developed by local communities.

Coalfield communities “literally fueled the growth of the nation,” said Peter Hille, president of the community economic development nonprofit Mountain Association in eastern Kentucky. “There is a debt to be paid. Justice demands we bring new investment to these places: to build a new economy, to revitalize communities and to educate people of all ages to be ready.”

Congress continues to consider its role in sustaining coal country, too. In July, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois introduced “the Marshall Plan for Coal Country Act” to establish a plan to stabilize local economies after a mine closure, fund environmental restoration and provide healthcare and higher education for coal workers.

Another, more regional plan titled “Reimagine Appalachia,” developed by Policy Matters Ohio, West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, Keystone Research Center and Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, proposes public investments to expand opportunity, investing in climate-friendly infrastructure and businesses, and promoting workers rights to rebuild the middle class.

None of these packages come cheap. The geographic scope and sheer depth of the crisis facing coal communities requires a heavy investment that only the federal government is capable of making. Congress has previously intervened for coal miners and their families. In December 2019, lawmakers shifted money from an abandoned mine land fund to prop up the United Mine Workers of America’s 1974 retirement plan, which had been squeezed over decades and thrown into uncertainty by the recent bankruptcy of Murray Energy.

Securing support for an expensive, large-scale transition in coal country will be challenging, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic. On one hand, lawmakers — especially conservative Republicans who represent coal communities on Capitol Hill — may be wary of voting for such a large expenditure after spending trillions on economic stimulus bills. On the other, the transformative effect of the pandemic during a presidential election year may provide a rare opportunity to build political consensus behind a transition package.

“I feel like there’s a lot of energy behind systems change right now,” said Mary Cromer, deputy director of the Appalachian Citizens Law Center. “There are a lot more discussions about just transition now than there were before. Some of that is because just transition is part and parcel to the rethinking of the way we’ve ordered our society that’s going on right now. I am hopeful about that.”

Survival is anything but certain for coal country is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.