Energy and Resources

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Energy and Resources

Wyoming has a history steeped in energy and miming and it has served to create jobs, government benefit programs and fundamental infrastructure for our economic possibilities in our state. We must work to facilitate growth, balanced regulations and opportunity for utilizing resources to foment prosperity balanced with land development and...

Carbon Recapture: A Risky Subsidy

Tuesday, 02 July 2019

Energy and Resources

by Philip Baron It is no secret that coal provides a large chunk of the Wyoming's tax revenue. The coal industry in Wyoming was responsible for about $1 billion in tax revenue to state and local governments in 2013, according to the Wyoming Mining Association. This revenue has been shrinking since 2015 with the declining demand for coal. Coal is un...

Wyoming and it’s over-regulated Coal Power Plants

Wednesday, 03 April 2019

Energy and Resources Regulation Keep Wyoming Strong

by Philip Baron The State of Wyoming has a new law on the books that will obligate electric, public utilities who are not cooperatives, to purchase coal-generated electricity. The law also limits the rate of recovery costs for the purchaser of the retired plant. Cost recovery is the costs to regain the value of an expense, usually done as the depre...

Clean Power Plan Status in Wyoming

Monday, 14 March 2016

Energy and Resources

We won. The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will not spend any money on the Clean Power Plan (CPP) until the Supreme Court's stay on the CCP is lifted, if ever. Here, for the terminally curious, is the longer version. Wyoming has an extremely short budget session, 20 working days. To work within that, the budget bill is done as a "mirror ...

Clean Power Plan: The Supreme Court's Surprise

Saturday, 20 February 2016

Energy and Resources

On Tuesday, February 9, the Supreme Court stayed the Clean Power Plan (CPP), much to everyone's surprise. The Supreme Court issued a terse order, less than a page long. It gave no explanation and no indication of the thinking of the five Justices who voted for the stay. The Supreme Court has never before granted a stay of any federal regulation whi...

Reliability and the Clean Power Plan

Monday, 25 January 2016

Energy and Resources

Such is the stuff of unicorns and leprechauns.– FERC Commissioner Tony Clark One aspect of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) we have not yet discussed in this series of blogs on the Clean Power Plan is the reliability of America's electric power generation in 2030. The recent winter storm Jonas on the east coast should remind us of how much we have come t...

Solar Powering the World

Tuesday, 29 December 2015

Energy and Resources

A meme has been going around Facebook asking, "Did you know that it would take an area of just 254 kilometres squared filled with solar panels to power the entire world?" No sources, no calculations from known data, nothing. Just a bald faced assertion. Really? Let's see if someone with a degree in philosophy, not in engineering, can do a quick bac...

Environmental Effects of the Clean Power Plan

Friday, 18 December 2015

Energy and Resources

What will the environmental effects of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) be? Recall that the stated media driven, post-Kyoto Protocol (to which the US did not subscribe), goalis to reduce the Earth's temperature increase between now and 2100 to less than 2 ℃. The short answer is: zilch. NERA Economic Consulting estimates that CPP by 2030 will reduce the g...

EPA's Clean Power Plan

Thursday, 10 December 2015

Energy and Resources

What is the EPA's Clean Power Plan (CPP)? It is a cap and trade scheme intended to reduce emissions from existing power generators such as coal generators. It was proposed by the EPA in June, 2014, and the final rule was unveiled by President Obama on August 15, 2015. The final version of the plan aims to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from ...

Leave Risky Business to Private Investors

Monday, 20 April 2015

Energy and Resources

Have you ever wondered whether government should buy coal or natural gas, convert it to a higher valued product and then sell that product in the open market? If this sounds like a bad idea to you, you'd be right. Private companies have already invested their own money in this type of scheme and lost big. It is unlikely government would do better w...

Coal Alchemy and Corporate Welfare

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Energy and Resources

A Wyoming love story For thousands of years, alchemists tried to change base metals into gold. Today, this lofty goal rests unachieved, but its legacy remains. Now, instead of changing lead to gold, crafty alchemists look to change money from the pockets of taxpayers to their own, and governments seem happy to assist. High on the alchemy hit list i...

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