It’s time to toss Wyoming’s carbon capture mandate on junkpile of bad ideas

When events strangely align to put politically polar-opposite camps together, people always wonder how it happened. But there’s really no mystery why the Freedom Caucus that controls the Wyoming House and the Legislature’s few progressives both want to repeal a 2020 law designed to “save” the coal industry.

It was a terrible idea then, and it looks even worse today. The more people who come to that conclusion, no matter their political beliefs, the better off Wyoming will be.

Requiring regulated electric utilities to meet federal pollution regulations by retrofitting coal-burning power plants with carbon capture technology was always a Hail Mary plan that should’ve never seen the drawing board, much less advanced.

But the Legislature and Gov. Mark Gordon refused to let the free market determine the fate of the coal industry, which led to Wyoming being the only state that requires a coal-burning utility to study implementing a system that has never proven commercially viable. The latest research shows that carbon capture is unaffordable and would result in huge increases in Wyoming customers’ bills.

Yet it remains on the books. The Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee was divided on sponsoring a repeal bill last month. Seven of eight representatives in attendance voted in favor of it, but only one of five senators backed it — not enough to achieve the majority required to sponsor the measure.

The proposal was brought to the committee by Rep. Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette, a Freedom Caucus member who sponsored a similar measure earlier this year that failed. “Why are we continuing to charge the end user for something that probably will not pan out?” he asked the committee.

In May the U.S. Department of Energy cancelled $3.7 billion in federal grants to support “clean energy” demonstration projects, including $49 million for a “large-scale” carbon capture pilot project at the Dry Fork Station coal-fired power plant north of Gillette.

“Dry Fork has been identified in different studies as the lowest-cost plant in the country to attempt this technology,” University of Wyoming Associate Professor of Economics Rob Godby told WyoFile. “If it won’t work here, where will it work?”

Knapp’s House Bill 209, “Carbon capture mandate-repeal,” was supported by the Freedom Caucus, the more moderate Wyoming Caucus, and all six House Democrats in February. The lone vote against it in its final reading was cast by Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander. But the Senate Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee killed it without even a vote, signaling the sharp divide between the two chambers on this issue.

In 2020, House Bill 200, “Reliable and dispatchable low-carbon energy standards,” was approved before the Freedom Caucus came into power. The House approved it 39-19, with most of the rag-tag team of GOP rebels at the time — including now-Secretary of State Chuck Gray — voting no. 

The Freedom Caucus likes to characterize opponents of repealing the bill as “liberal Wyoming Republicans,” mythological creatures who don’t actually exist except in their minds. But seven very real left-leaning House Democrats and one independent voted against the carbon capture mandate, which should bury once and for all the Freedom Caucus’ claim that liberals consider it “green” technology.

It’s never been the choice of lawmakers who want Wyoming to offer more renewable energy like wind and solar, and quit artificially pumping up a dying coal industry.

The Freedom Caucus’ chief complaint about carbon capture has always been that Gordon wants it, so it must be bad. Its members went apocalyptic when the governor visited Harvard University in October 2023 and addressed how new carbon capture technology would help achieve his net-zero carbon goal for Wyoming.

“We can’t afford to give an inch to the anti-fossil fuel crowd and Mark Gordon needs to explain to the people of Wyoming why he’s selling our economy and our livelihoods down the liberal river,” then-Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, told Fox News. 

For many years, the Wyoming Republican Party was united by the belief that climate change is a hoax. That’s still what the Freedom Caucus and its allies preach. The best example is Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, one of the 10 Senate no votes for the carbon capture mandate in 2020. She and Bear co-sponsored this year’s Senate File 92, “Make carbon dioxide great again-no net zero.” It didn’t make it out of Senate Minerals.

Steinmetz and her fellow climate change deniers on the Senate Agriculture Committee sponsored a “hearing” in February 2024 that will go down as one of the weirdest events in the Capitol’s history. It featured the CO2 Coalition, a traveling band of “scientists” with very dubious credentials, and began by Steinmetz ruling that no opposing views would be heard.

But despite it being a scientific-fact-free day, I can’t argue with Steinmetz’s economic message: taxpayer funds shouldn’t be used for carbon capture, and until the mandate is repealed, “Wyoming ratepayers will pay for these policies.”

Rocky Mountain Power’s customers in Wyoming have subsidized about $3.9 million worth of technical and economic feasibility analysis of carbon capture; Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power’s customers have paid nearly $900,000. The latter’s parent company, Black Hills Energy, said the most viable technology it’s found would cost about $500 million. 

The utility’s 45,000 customers in the Cheyenne area — and I’m one of them — can start practicing their best Howard Beale impersonations. For younger readers, that’s the “Network” movie newsman who screams, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

And it gets worse: Black Hills Energy’s carbon capture retrofit at the Wygen II power plant near Gillette would knock down the coal plant’s electric generation capacity by more than 30%. That means the company will need to replace about 30 megawatts of lost power. Guess who will be on the line for that?

In Gordon, Wyoming elected a Republican governor willing to say that climate change is real and the state must adapt its economy to the energy transition. Hallelujah and all that, but does that slice of real life have to come with requiring utilities to use unproven, unaffordable technology that will bankrupt us, instead of much less expensive renewable energy we already know reduces greenhouse gas emissions? 

It’s time for the Legislature to repeal its 2020 mandate and quit trying to pick winners and losers. Hey, that sounds like something the Freedom Caucus would say. Politics does make strange bedfellows. 

While it sometimes makes me cringe to see myself and like-minded progressives and environmentalists on the same side as climate change deniers, on this issue, I’ve gotten over it. Personal motivations aside, what’s important is doing the right thing for the state, country and the entire planet.