His state is suffering like Oklahoma in the energy downturn, but Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead also knows the coal industry has a big target on its back from the Obama administration. Jobs are being lost and the oil and gas and coal industries are hurting.
But this week, he released a new state energy plan to offer some help to the industries.
“We do have things that we can control,” said the governor in releasing the plan. “For the state as a whole and our future, we have a choice of either not trying to control the things we can control, or try to be proactive and do what we can.”
His plan calls for more funding to do clean coal research, a new focus on renewables and looking again at the state’s reclamation policies. But as the Billings Gazette reported, gone from the stragegy is an initiave to grow new foreign markets for natural gas and coal.
Since Wyoming is about to become home to the nation’s biggest wind farms, a story reported earlier this week by OK Energy Today, Gov. Mead’s new energy plan will focus on bringing wind turbine manufacturing to the state.
So is the energy plan a shift in his approach for Wyoming?
“The fact is it’s a doubling down on coal and a very good start on renewables,” answered the governor.
The updated plan includes giving Wyoming a lead role in regulating uranium mining, a process now shared with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Governor Mead said Wyoming cannot control the global coal market but it can do other things as part of making Wyoming the nation’s second largest energy producing state. The state still is working to create an overseas markets for Wyoming coal to be shipped out of proposed coal terminals in the Pacific Northwest.
Read full story in Billings Gazette.
Billings Gazette
