Wind turbines continued to sprout across Wyoming this year as legacy oil and natural gas industries weathered bumps in the market, uranium mines resumed operations and coal companies held out hope for brighter days.
It was also the year that a vast majority of Wyomingites woke up to climate change, according to a University of Wyoming survey that showed 86% believe it is happening and they are alarmed at what it portends for the state’s scant water resources.
But Wyoming’s most significant energy headlines of 2025 — even beyond the proliferation of data center plans that would double the state’s electrical demand and intense debate over nuclear energy projects — were President Donald Trump’s sweeping, incessant slashing of federal regulations to boost fossil fuels and orders to rebuff renewable energy.
Sweeping federal policy
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, which, among other things, directed federal agencies to repeal “all ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions standards for the power sector,” as well as Biden-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The order also directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to “reconsider” the landmark 2009 endangerment finding that determined greenhouse gases cause harm and compelled past administrations to curb their emissions.
The president tapped Wyoming’s own Cyrus Western, a former Wyoming lawmaker, to lead the EPA’s Region 8 office overseeing much of the Rockies Region, including Wyoming.
“I think President Trump has been really clear that he wants to take a very different direction and work with the states, help encourage industry, but also simultaneously ensuring that the communities do have access to clean water, that their air is clean, that kind of stuff,” Western told WyoFile in March.
The GOP-led Congress followed Trump’s lead in prioritizing fossil fuels in July with provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill that slashed royalty rates for coal, oil and natural gas. While cheered by Wyoming’s extractive industries, WyoFile reported the cuts will choke the flow of federal dollars — a $50 million annual loss for the state on coal royalties alone.
Still, Trump’s efforts won praise from Wyoming’s congressional delegation and Gov. Mark Gordon, who celebrated the “immediate change in approach” to federal energy policies and described the new direction as “a win for U.S. energy and Wyoming.”
Wyoming conservation groups decried the moves, which included an overhaul of the planning processes for public lands. The sweeping changes, they said, are a threat to the state’s wildlife and an outdoor recreation economy that heavily relies on federal public lands, including the already climate-stressed Red Desert.
“The Trump administration has obviously led with prioritizing extractive industries over all other uses on public lands,” Wyoming Outdoor Council Conservation Director Alec Underwood told WyoFile in September.
Coal lease flop
Trump’s effort to “unlock” federal coal reserves in Wyoming and Montana failed spectacularly, at the hands of a coal mining company with operations in the Powder River Basin.
Based on the premise that a Biden-era ban on future coal leasing in the region hamstrings a soon-to-be resurrected industry, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management scoured the books for federal coal leases that had gone dormant and could be put up for sale. The agency cleared the decks for a 167 million-ton coal lease auction in Montana for a single, apparent bidder, Navajo Transitional Energy Company. Before that auction took place, the administration announced it would also revive a years-long lingering 441 million-ton federal coal tract in Wyoming for auction — again, enticing the single, apparent bidder NTEC, which had not asked for the opportunity, a company official told WyoFile.
When the Montana federal coal auction came on Oct. 6, NTEC — the lone bidder — offered just $186,000. In 2012, the last time the industry demanded a major federal lease sale in the region, the bid was $1.10 per ton. This time around, NTEC’s fraction-of-a-penny per ton bid spurred the administration to indefinitely postpone the 441-million-ton auction scheduled for days later in Wyoming.
“It tells you that there’s no competition for that coal in the ground, and it’s not worth very much money,” Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis Energy Data Analyst Seth Feaster told WyoFile.
Despite those results, Wyoming’s congressional delegation in November led an effort to bypass the enshrined public-input process for crafting BLM land management plans by invoking the rarely used Congressional Review Act. The move invalidated the agency’s Wyoming and Montana resource management plans for the sole purpose — according to the delegation — of overturning the ban on future leasing. Trump signed the law in December.
Nuclear contention
Growing interest in nuclear energy proved particularly divisive in Wyoming.
While the $4 billion Natrium “advanced” nuclear power plant continued construction near Kemmerer and notched permitting milestones — thanks in part to Trump executive orders to fast-track such endeavors — the towns of Bar Nunn and Gillette weighed other high-dollar nuclear proposals.
California-based Radiant Industries both enthralled and alarmed Bar Nunn and Natrona County residents with its proposal to manufacture nuclear microreactors for global deployment. The plan, however, would have required an exception to Wyoming’s partial ban on spent nuclear fuel waste storage. The issue ignited tensions that drew political divisions and, ultimately, led to Radiant scrapping its Wyoming plans in October.
Longtime U.S. Navy contractor BWXT, meantime, introduced its own plans in Gillette: a nuclear fuel manufacturing plant that does not involve spent nuclear fuel storage. In December, Gordon awarded BWXT a $100 million grant to support the project.
Both proposals came amid intense legislative debate and a Gordon-backed Wyoming-Idaho-Utah alliance to center America’s nuclear energy resurgence in the region.
Climate contention
A whopping 86% of residents (compared to 55% in 2014) believe climate change is happening, University of Wyoming researchers reported. And, researchers said, most respondents didn’t know their neighbors felt the same.
There was evidence, though, when a crowd of voters in Pinedale booed Rep. Harriet Hageman when she used the phrase “absolutely based on false science” to describe the 2009 endangerment finding — the federal doctrine to combat air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. And when Freedom Caucus members sought to make carbon dioxide great again with a bill to outlaw greenhouse gas reduction efforts, their legislative colleagues shot it down.
In September, Gordon joined top Trump administration officials in Washington, D.C. to celebrate a package of coal industry revival initiatives, including a $625 million spending package to “retrofit” old coal plants. Upon return, WyoFile asked him about the carbon-emission implications of extending the use of coal-burning power plants.
He asserted that deploying coal carbon capture technologies is key to addressing greenhouse gas emissions without inflicting too much economic pain, and added, “I think, probably, the answer is fairly clear: There’ll be more CO2 production.”