“The pictures I took do not, in any way, convey what I am seeing. The vastness of this landscape is unbelievable, and the perspectives cannot be captured in the pictures I’ve taken! You have to experience this country for yourself!”
— A note home from a visitor to Wyoming, September 2023
Not everyone loves our vast state, but those who do are moved. I’m writing this today to remind you how special Wyoming is — and why that’s the case. Wyoming’s enchanted light paints our vistas and moves our visitors.
Now those vistas are in danger. People living far away want their electricity produced by monster wind factories and solar processing plants that permanently sever our views. Wyoming landscapes need protection. We need stricter siting rules to ensure that protection. Moreover, we need more revenue from the loss of our landscapes. Under our existing tax system, which has made fossil fuels our state’s mainstay revenue source for more than 50 years, renewable energy developments provide little funding, particularly in comparison to the permanent changes they impose.
Opinion
Wyoming, the place I love, the place you love, needs your help. I am particularly calling on those of you who moved here because of its magic, but who also want to combat global warming. Many of you live in our town of Lander. Others are members of the state’s environmental NGO and advocacy organizations.
I have always been a little envious of people who came from somewhere else and fell in love with Wyoming. I thank you for showing me your passion for her high plains, arid deserts, rushing streams, deep canyons and towering peaks. I am calling on you to join me in keeping Wyoming’s spirit wild as we face unprecedented and permanent loss of thousands of square miles of countryside to renewable energy development.
The development of renewables across our open spaces largely has been designed to benefit those far away people who consume the electricity we produce but don’t want the forests of tall turbines and seas of panels in their own backyards. They do not love our landscapes as much as we do.
I understand that many of you care deeply about our Earth. I do too. We recently experienced the most beautiful summer and fall. It is astounding to me that when I was a boy, you could expect the first frost by Sept. 5th. Last year, the first real frost did not grip Lander until October. May was even more dramatic — last May was almost entirely frost free. Yet in Lander, the rule of thumb for Lander used to be to wait until the first of June to set out garden plants, and to plant potatoes and other frost-sensitive vegetables no more than a week before. The climate is changing.
I know you want to do the right thing and fight climate change. But you are missing one big point: You came to Wyoming because you loved it outright (or maybe the person who was already here, but then you really learned to love it on your own).
Save Wyoming. Let someone else feel that awe when they stand on the same ridge where you stood so long ago and marveled at the space and light. Let them see a landscape unchanged since the ice age. You owe this to the planet as well. Only in this way, can our Wyoming make it through the next decades of renewable development. Wyoming is not expendable.
You – we – owe Wyoming to the planet too.
“God bless Wyoming and keep it wild.”
— Last entry in the diary of 15-year old Becky Mettler, 1925
“climate change” is a hoax. Vast vistas are real. Enjoy and appreciate what is real.
Science is like magic, but real…
Repeating political hyperbole lets the rational folks identify the willfully ignorant people much easier.
My hope would be that on the heels of renewable energy development, with its enormous impact on our visual resources, would be a steady march of decommissioning of the former landscape-blighting resource extraction industries. Someday the Jonah Field and other o&g areas will be reclaimed. The scars will be visible on the land for centuries (think Oregon Trail ruts), but ecosystem functions will gradually be restored. Wildlife and native vegetation are just waiting for active human disturbance to go away, then they will recolonize where they can. Most important are industrial energy siting requirements, to create sacrifice zones while protecting other landscapes. Wind resources are not evenly spread across the state, any more than sources of fossil fuels are. Of all of these the transmission lines are going to be the most permanent. Even those big eagle killing wind towers will come down someday when new technologies are developed. As we transition to electric everything, the grid of the future will be a project on a par with organizing the Interstate Highway system. The less scattershot and more integrated these projects the better for all.
Mr. Case has a very well written article. I feel Cheyenne has a good example of wind energy and it is at the edge of town past that you don’t see any wind energy on I 80 until Arlington personally I’m used to seeing them there I have heard it becomes a refuge for wildlife as there’s no hunting there But a blink of an eye your past Arlington and the only thing you see is interstate 80 and semi trucks obstructing the natural vistas to me it just doesn’t seem like wind energy is overtaking our beautiful prairies and I like the idea of having a wind farm close to town, and definitely Wyoming should be more hands-on develop inner structure for renewables and designate areas for that sort of use
The article is very interesting. Many places are truly magnificent viewing. Are there any groups which are thinking of paying for viewscapes to protect from wind power, Suggestions of possible sources of funding to the landowners of potential WES are the state of Wyoming, conservation groups, recreation groups, historical groups, wildlife conservation groups, groups for tourist attraction, local businesses and advocates for migration corridors’ for wildlife and human migration. This is a concept not talked about but could have possibilities.
Thank you Kail. Now if you can convince our legislature to take positive action to preserve what we have left.
It turns out that wind and sunshine are unlimited resources that we can export without depleting them. Is Senator Case more concerned about losing the severance tax money or the view?
As someone who was drawn to Wyoming by the magic of its awesome splendor and vast solitary spaces, my thanks to Mr. Case for his heartfelt piece. With his extensive background in Environmental Economics, he knows full well both sides of which he speaks.
I agree with the other comments. I remember Pinedale before the Jonah Field permanently destroyed much of the area. Not just from the drilling fields itself either. The massive endless lines of trucks that belch diesel in our faces when we drive the area. You’re from Lander which has been largely insulated from all of this. Drive I-80 from Rawlins to Granger or 191 from Rock Springs to Pinedale. You won’t see any windmills but you’ll sure as hell see a destroyed landscape.
Wyoming’s wide vistas are a treasure to humans and climate change is a danger to humans. Identifying the most treasured vistas and protecting them from energy development while accepting some energy development impacts is a balancing act. There is a role for elected officials, government agencies, thoughtful citizens, and corporate developers in finding that balance.
Has anyone ever seen an oilfield? A coal mine? The Lung injuring and vista ruining haze from power plants? The droughts, floods and species compromising effects of global heating? The destruction of quiet and the point source pollution of our biggest airport? Alternative sources of energy are no big deal in comparison!
I always do love the fossil-fuel-fools who wring their hands over the negative environmental effects of renewable energy sources, while totally ignoring the much worse effects fossil fuels have. What, no mention of how ugly oil spills are at small time oil grasshoppers, oil derricks across the sky, pollution clouds from fossil energy plants, aged oil field machinery littering the fields along the highways, and tearing huge gashes in the earth for coal extraction? While your concern for the environment is laudable, your narrow vision regarding its source is laughable. And, some of us actually find the wind turbines to be quite beautiful – I have since I first saw them over 35 years ago. In ending, as for “the most beautiful summer”, here is a piece from Yale Climate Connections, on what they better described as, “The scorching summer of 2023 reaches ‘mind-blowing’ high temperatures. Death Valley hit 129°F (120°F at night), China set its all-time heat record, and a heatwave continues to roast Europe.” https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-scorching-summer-of-2023-reaches-mind-blowing-high-temperatures/
I think protection of our wildlife and wild lands correlates well with combatting climate change. There are also many ways we can improve them with quality grazing systems and habitat related improvements. Today’s vision is all about controlling carbon, yet no one talks about range/habitat conditions, associated ground and vegetation cover and how that contributed to capturing carbon. Some have talked about it in relation to forests but little is mentioned when it relates to our vast sagebrush communities. The combination of protecting and improving our natural wild lands correlates well with combatting climate change.
Great opinion piece. In Wyoming, we worry about protecting wildlife habitat, yet we allow wind and solar projects to destroy thousands of acres without a complaint. We allow energy companies to move in, forcing displaced wildlife to move out–or just disappear. All to provide California more socially acceptable power, while paying little into our state in severance taxes. How is this good for the people of Wyoming or the wildlife we all love?
The Wyoming Legislature passed legislation in 2004 that called for development of new electric generation and transmission projects to “diversify and expand the Wyoming economy” and found that doing so “is in the public interest of the citizens of this state.”
To that point, the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources conducted an economic study called “Measuring the Economic Impacts of Wind Projects in Wyoming,” published in June 2022. According to the study, one 500 MW Wyoming wind project:
“…can contribute over $7M annually in sales tax, generation tax, and property tax. Taken together, this tax revenue will benefit local schools, health systems, senior citizens, and many other aspects of Wyoming counties and communities. Further, wind power plants pay land leases and fees for the use of federal, state, and private land. Income received by private landowners creates ripple effects in the economy (and)… Fees from leases of state land contribute to Wyoming’s fiscal revenue…. we note that they create economic benefits to the region beyond what is discussed in the report.”
The Wyoming Legislature also has already passed legislation with the effect of more than doubling the total state tax burden on Wyoming wind power plants. Additional UW economic studies have looked at the “totality of the taxes” in western states for wind power and found that Wyoming wind plant taxes paid per megawatt-hour are now the highest among all of the interior western states, equaling between $3.05 and $4.21 per MWh for new wind development. In comparison to, say, Montana, where the low end of taxes paid per MWh was $1.82.
The Wyoming Legislature also has already assured that wind power plants at end of life will be reclaimed and decommissioned to protect land and environmental resources, with full reclamation and decommissioning plans required as part of county and state permit applications (and required by federal authorizations as well). Further, developers must post third-party surety bonds in advance of construction (totaling millions of dollars in bond premiums that the developer pays) to cover the full estimated future reclamation and decommissioning costs, which is a state requirement and a federal requirement. Because of these and other federal, state and local requirements, the BLM determined as part of their EIS for our wind project that there would be no irretrievable and no irreversible land use impacts or visual impacts from our project.
The location of Wyoming’s current wind power plants can be viewed via this public database: https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/#7.29/42/-105.407 It shows Wyoming’s wind projects are co-located with or adjacent to existing infrastructure and existing disturbance such as the interstate, railroad lines and highways.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide these comments. We appreciate the strong support we have received for our wind project from our Carbon County neighbors and from people across Wyoming.
I agree with Mr. Case that Wyoming vistas are beautiful but feel that he is underestimating the impact of climate change. CO2 warms the earth and we have increased the CO2 in our atmosphere by more than 50%. We have barely started to see the impacts from that warming. At the rate we are going, by 2100 the planet will warm a whopping 12 degrees. The difference in the temperature between now and during the last ice age was only 7 degrees. If we don’t address climate change the vistas will be the least of our worries. It’s hard to enjoy the scenery if the world around you is in ashes.
As the director of the National Wildlife Federation pointed out in an April 2009 TIME Magazine article:
What good is a nature reserve — fought for, paid for and protected — if global warming renders it unlivable? “Climate change could undermine the conservation work of whole generations,” says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. “It turns out you can’t save species without saving the sky.”
Here, Here 👏🏼
I have to agree. I think that the wind turbines have changed the Wyoming landscape in a negative way. They and all the connecting roads have an industrial profile during the day. At night the once nighttime sky is blemished by the lights. I can imagine the disappointment when we finally go to nuclear energy and these turbines are no longer viable.
You forget the clouds of smoky pollution produced by The Bridger Coal Fired Power plant that shrouds our pristine mountains. At least watching the majestic turbine blades turn doesn’t damage my health.
I applaud the sentiment, I believe we are destroying our beautiful home. One does not ‘fight’ climate change unless one enjoys wasted efforts. The climate has changed for millions of years and will continue with or without man’s assistance. But yes, stop building forests of raptor and bee killing whirly gigs and and acres of lizard roasting terraces of silicon carbide.