Colorado and Wyoming, at odds over energy policy, find common ground on carbon capture
Energize Weekly, July 5, 2023
When it comes to energy policy, there isn’t a lot that Wyoming and Colorado see eye to eye on, but the two neighbors have common ground on capturing carbon dioxide from the air.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an agreement on June 27 to collaborate on the development of direct-air carbon capture.
“Colorado and Wyoming each have pieces of the puzzle necessary to develop a carbon removal market and industry,” Gordon said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Wyoming has been trying to prop up its coal mining industry and coal-fired power plants, while taking aim at limiting renewable energy, as Colorado is closing coal plants with an aim of 100 percent renewable energy by 2040.
Direct-air capture, however, appears to be something they can agree upon.
The technique removes carbon dioxide from the air and then sequesters and stores it either for carbon removal credits or to be used for industrial applications, such as enhanced oil recovery or as a chemical feedstock for other products.
The U.S. Department of Energy has a $2.5 billion program to develop six demonstration carbon capture projects. In 2022, the Biden administration increased the tax credit for carbon capture operations.
“Together, we have a powerful combination of assets, infrastructure, policy, markets, people, geology and mindsets that are needed to accelerate the development of the industry,” Gordon said.
“Wyoming is one of the largest emerging hubs for CO2 pipeline infrastructure and projects, serving not just Wyoming, but linking to Colorado and Montana,” according to the Great Plains Institute, a clean energy advocate.
“As such, Wyoming is strategically positioned to become both a major source of CO2 captured from industrial facilities and power plants, as well as a hub for the beneficial use and geologic storage of captured carbon,” the institue said.
Colorado is already home to the world’s second-largest operating direct-air carbon capture project and has been developing a policy environment to evaluate the regulatory, economic, technological and research opportunities in the carbon dioxide removal.
“This partnership with Wyoming shows how our creative, solutions-oriented states can achieve real-world success for the benefit of our states, our region, and our nation,” Polis said in a statement.
Wyoming has threatened to sue Colorado over its push to close or convert to natural gas all 10 of its remaining coal-fired units by 2031.
Wyoming is the country’s top coal producer, providing 40 percent of the national output. It is also the eighth-largest oil producer, and the state relies on fossil fuels to generate 60 percent of state and local revenues.
Between 2020 and 2022, Wyoming passed a series of laws making it harder to close any of the state’s 11 coal-fired power plants (though only two are slated to be in operation after 2030). Wyoming gets 71 percent of its electricity from coal-fired units.
One law signed by Gordon mandates electric utilities to generate some of their electricity from plants with carbon capture technology. Another law requires a utility to search for a buyer for a coal-fired unit before closing it.
This past legislative session, lawmakers proposed a bill to repeal net-metering for rooftop solar, an important financial incentive for installations. The bill failed, but only after a legislative battle.
Another legislative resolution aimed to phase out electric vehicles in the state after 2035. The bill didn’t make it out of committee, but generated national attention, while a bill that did pass the legislature imposing a moratorium on the use of eminent domain for wind energy projects was vetoed by Gordon.
The governor said the measure “would interfere with the rights of private landowners to exercise their private property and contractual rights, as well as their right to contract with whomever they choose.”
“The market is headed one way and Wyoming is running in the opposite direction,” Shannon Anderson, an attorney with the Powder River Basin Resource Council, an environmental group, told the news site, WyoFile.
“We throw up these bills, but they’re either too extreme or they’re not actually going to make a difference,” Anderson said.
A bill that did clear the legislature and was signed by Gordon was to reappropriate $1.2 million into a fund to use for lawsuits against coal-fired plant closures in other states.
Wyoming has already contributed $250,000 to the Energy Policy Network, a lobbying group that intervened to challenge plans to close a Colorado coal plant.
Colorado is fifth in oil production among the states and tenth in coal production (down from sixth in 2006), but it is headed in a decidedly different direction from Wyoming.
In 2021, Colorado issued a Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap aimed at cutting the state’s emission 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050. Electric utility emissions are targeted to be cut by at least 80 percent by 2030.
The state also has a goal to reach 100 percent renewable energy generation by 2040.
Direct-air carbon capture is, however, the sweet spot in the Colorado-Wyoming Venn diagram.
“This exciting bipartisan partnership builds upon our nation-leading work in Colorado to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2040 while adding good-paying jobs,” Polis said. “I am proud to partner with Gov. Gordon on this innovative work that benefits both Colorado and Wyoming.”
