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Wyoming Stalls for Time as Coal Industry Declines

Steve Baragona

   KEMMERER, WYOMING --A six-foot-tall plastic Tyrannosaurus rex stands
   guard outside Robert Bowen's fossil shop on Pine Street in downtown,
   Kemmerer, Wyo., in the state's southwest corner.

   "One of the fun things about some of the fossils is, they tell
   stories," Bowen said, pointing to a fossilized stingray hanging on the
   shop wall. The beautifully preserved disc-shaped skeleton has a chunk
   missing from its left side.

   "He got a little too close to a turtle or an alligator," he explained.
   "You can see the elongated bite mark."

   The town of Kemmerer calls itself "Wyoming's Aquarium in Stone."
   Quarries just outside town yield schools of fossilized fish with just a
   few taps of a chisel. A freshwater lake covered the region 50 million
   years ago.

   The backbone of the town's economy, however, is a different kind of
   fossil: fossil fuel. A coal mine feeds the Naughton Power Plant just
   outside town.

   "It's huge for us, as far as our economy," said Bowen, who sits on the
   town council. The plant and the mine provide about 400 jobs and the
   bulk of the tax base in the town of about 3,000 people.

   So it sent a shudder through the community late last year when
   [1]PacifiCorp, the Naughton plant's owner, announced that closing the
   plant early would save its customers nearly $200 million on fuel and
   maintenance costs.

   While coal has powered the industrialized world for centuries, an
   energy transition is underway around the world. Concern about
   climate-changing emissions is one factor. But simple economics is
   pushing coal out of markets it once dominated. The cost of natural gas,
   wind and solar power have plunged in the last decade or so.

References

   1. https://www.pacificorp.com/content/dam/pcorp/documents/en/pacificorp/energy/integrated-resource-plan/2019-irp/2019-irp-presentations-and-schedule/2018-12-03-04%20-%20General%20Public%20Meeting.pdf

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