The 68th Wyoming Legislature — the first body of state lawmakers controlled by a far-right Freedom Caucus — will consider a blockbuster slate of hot-button energy bills when it convenes in January.
Wyoming residents packed legislative hearings and other meetings this year to demand greater transparency and public input regarding small mining operations. Lawmakers instead advanced a draft measure to expand the list of operations excluded from public scrutiny during the permitting process.
Wyomingites also voiced concerns about the state warehousing radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. But they had to wait nearly two months to review and comment on a proposed policy change on the matter after Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee Co-chairman Donald Burkhart Jr. (R-Rawlins) added it to the committee’s bills list literally in the last minutes of a 2-day hearing in July and refused to share it publicly.
Consternation over rising electric rates — in part due to previous legislative decisions — also drove vocal public engagement, but as of yet, few solutions have been offered for the 2025 session.
Meantime, lawmakers continue efforts to bolster Wyoming’s flagging fossil fuels industries through tax cuts and help utilizing federal incentives.
Residents will get to weigh in on these issues, and other energy-related bills, when lawmakers gavel in on Jan. 14 in Cheyenne for the Legislature’s 40-day general session.
They’ll do so amid a landmark shift in power from the long-dominant traditional conservatives to the rapidly ascendant Freedom Caucus — a faction of lawmakers with an unapologetic history of climate denial and opposition to carbon capture policies.
Here are five things to know about the Legislature’s slate of energy bills.
Carrot and stick taxes
Lawmakers will weigh tax breaks for surface coal mines and for produced oil associated with practices that capture, store or make commercial use of planet-warming carbon dioxide. Another bill would impose an annual fee on all-electric vehicles and levy a tax on electricity sold to power up EVs.
House Bill 75 – Coal severance tax rate, sponsored by Rep. Ken Clouston (R-Gillette), would reduce the state’s severance tax on coal from 6.5% to 6%, decreasing annual state revenue by about $9.6 million in 2026 and by lesser amounts thereafter, according to the bill’s fiscal note.
The severance tax was reduced in 2022 from 7% to 6.5% at a revenue cost of about $10 million annually. Former Rep. Tim Hallinan (R-Gillette), at the time, championed the tax break as a way to “help coal companies to reinvest in their infrastructure, purchase needed equipment and supplies, implement reclamation management and maintain a full workforce,” he said.
Wyoming coal production has continued its yearslong decline, but proponents see some hope in sustained coal demand.
Another pair of bills aims to entice developers to increase their investments in “enhanced oil recovery,” which typically describes oil that is produced by pumping planet-warming carbon dioxide into oil-laden reservoirs.
Senate File 18 – Enhanced oil recovery-severance tax exemption, sponsored by the Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee, would reduce the severance tax on oil from 6% to 3% if tied to practices that capture, store or reuse carbon dioxide. The measure would reduce state revenue by $2.1 million in 2027, $4.5 million in 2028 and potentially more in following years, according to the bill’s fiscal note.
In addition, Senate File 17 – Carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery stimulus, also sponsored by the minerals committee, would establish a $10 million fund to be distributed to companies that qualify for the federal 45Q tax credit for enhanced oil recovery. The bill revives a similar effort that failed during the Legislature’s last session.
Another bill aims to expand fuel taxes to include all-electric vehicles.
House Bill 24 – Alternative fuel tax-electricity amendments, sponsored by the Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee, would impose a 4 cents per kilowatt hour tax on electricity used to power all-electric vehicles. That’s roughly equal to 24 cents per gallon in an energy-to-energy comparison, according to the bill and its fiscal note.
The bill would also mandate that EV owners purchase a $100 annual decal that displays Wyoming’s “bucking horse and rider emblem.”
Limited mining operations
There’s a bit of recent history regarding House Bill 10 – Limited mining operations-amendments, sponsored by the Minerals Committee, and related measures sponsored by Rep. Steve Harshman (R-Casper): House Bill 59 – Limited mining operations-water quality testing and House Bill 58 – State lands-notice for mineral leases.
Earlier this year lawmakers were on track to expand the types of minerals that qualify for a mining permit exemption that allows developers to forgo full regulatory review and public input for mines smaller than 15 acres. The goal was to streamline regulatory permitting processes and entice new rare-earth and hard rock mining industries to set up shop in the state, according to proponents.
The measure, Senate File 44 – Limited mining operations-amendments, ran into opposition late in the 2024 session when controversy erupted over a proposed gravel pit at the base of Casper Mountain in Harshman’s district.
Hundreds of nearby residents, who’d not been notified the state had granted exploration leases on the state-owned school sections, learned the developer, Casper-based Prism Logistics, also planned to use the state’s limited mining operations exemption to begin mining. They were shocked to learn that, not only does the exemption exclude opportunities to object to the operation, but lawmakers intended to expand the free pass to developers proposing to mine rare-earth metals, lithium, gold and other hard rock minerals associated with potentially toxic chemicals.
Homeowners in the Coates Road area of Casper Mountain on the west side of town said the exemption, along with the proposed measure expanding its application, leaves them with no avenue at the state level to oppose industrial operations near residential areas. Even with a gravel pit, they’re concerned about dust, noise, industrial truck traffic and threats that mining poses to domestic water sources.
Complicated by last-minute amendments, Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed the bill at the end of the 2024 session, citing language that appeared to challenge the state’s authority over activities on state-owned lands. When the Minerals Committee took up the bill again in the interim, it narrowed language toward the original draft but, despite public outcry, still did not address calls to include public notices and input.
Instead, HB 10 increases bonding requirements to cover cleanup costs for mines — which is unopposed, even by industry — and expands the exemption to include all hard rock minerals, except for coal and radioactive materials.
Harshman is sponsoring HB 59, which would add a requirement to test for potential impacts on domestic water resources.
“[Limited mining operations] don’t require baseline water testing,” Harshman told WyoFile, adding that most of the time, it’s not necessary. But there needs to be a regulatory safeguard to at least assess potential drinking water impact. “I support LMOs,” Harshman said. “I think what we’re starting to see, though, is a commercialization of them.”
State lands
The dustup over the Casper Mountain gravel pit also exposed, by many accounts, a boondoggle among the state’s top five elected officials, and helped spawn new allies in a long-running attempt to force state officials to recognize conservation as a legitimate value in the management of state lands, and adhere to local zoning and safety codes when businesses operate on state lands.
The Office of State Lands and Investments did not notify Casper Mountain area residents, or Natrona County officials, when it recommended approving several mining exploration leases on state lands in the area. Then the State Board of Land Commissioners, without reviewing the applications, voted unanimously to approve them.
After hearing from hundreds of residents in opposition to the proposed gravel pit, the commission — made up of Gov. Mark Gordon, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, Treasurer Curt Meier and Auditor Kristi Racines — acknowledged the public notification oversight and even contemplated negotiating with Prism Logistics to voluntarily relinquish the leases.
Land commissioners, however, maintain they are not required to provide public notice when approving such activities on state lands. The Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance in November filed suit against the state board for failing to provide public notice.
House Bill 58, also sponsored by Harshman, would force the board to provide prior notice to county officials and provide for public input.
“Nobody even knew about these leases,” Harshman said, recalling the flood of phone calls he received from residents when they first learned about the gravel mine proposal. The state ought to at least notify county officials, he added, because “they’re the ones closest to the people.
“It’s not anti-mining or anything else,” Harshman continued. “It’s just to make sure this process doesn’t fail the people, and then they’re all pitching in 20 bucks in the hat to hire a lawyer.”
The State Board of Land Commissioners has also resisted calls from residents and county officials to ensure that businesses and other activities they approve on state lands conform to county-level zoning and safety codes. In fact, the state sued Teton County for attempting to enforce such codes on a glamping resort on state lands there.
That case is currently before the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Nuclear waste storage
Current state statute prohibits commercial storage of high-level radioactive waste unless the federal government establishes a permanent repository.
The minerals committee will sponsor House Bill 16 – Used nuclear fuel storage-amendments — a bill that Co-chairman Burkhart says merely provides the opportunity to discuss changing the statutes. Fully legalizing such a business would require several more steps, he’s said, including public input and buy-in.
But Burkhart has also made clear a vision he shares with other lawmakers and proponents: temporary nuclear waste storage, if there’s enough support in the state that it actually comes to fruition, will lay the groundwork to attract nuclear waste reprocessing facilities.
“Currently, the United States does not reprocess nuclear fuel,” Burkhart told committee members in July. “I feel that within the next five years, that will change, and when it changes, wherever the fuel is stored is where they will do the reprocessing.”
The federal government, Burkhart added, will likely never permit a permanent, federal nuclear waste storage facility. But, he said, federal officials are eager to see states voluntarily take on temporary storage. The state could reap up to $4 billion annually in federal payments alone, he suggested, noting that such income could help counterbalance declining coal revenues.
Though he circulated a rough draft of the proposal to committee members — at the tail-end of a 2-day hearing in July — he refused to allow legislative staff to share it publicly until it was further worked up for the committee’s hearing in October.
That hearing drew dozens of comments from the public. Though some were in favor of the effort, others noted that Wyoming citizens had rejected the idea several times in the state’s recent history and took issue with how Burkhart had rolled it out.
“We’re a bit alarmed at the speed at which this issue, in particular, has come about,” Wyoming Outdoor Council Executive Director Carl Fisher told the committee. “One of our concerns about this legislation is the lack of public engagement where we’re kind of looking to federal agencies to convene [discussion on] this, but [Wyoming is] not convening local public processes around impacts on communities.”
The substance of the bill draft was unchanged in October, and only a handful of committee members dissented in moving the measure forward for introduction before the full Legislature.
Wildfire liabilities for utilities
Though there won’t be a committee-sponsored bill, a coalition of electric utilities and other stakeholders has said it plans to find sponsors for a measure to restrict what wildfire victims can claim damages for when a utility’s facilities spark a blaze.
Utility officials say their liability insurance rates, which are passed on to Wyoming customers, are skyrocketing due to recent utility-caused wildfires in an era of more intense and damaging fires in the West. Equally distressing, they say, is a trend to hit culpable utilities with multi-billion-dollar lawsuits — costs that can also be passed on to ratepayers and potentially bankrupt a utility.
The coalition of utilities, led by Wyoming Rural Electric Association Executive Director Shawn Taylor, scrambled this year to draft legislation to limit their liability related to wildfires, including buy-in from stakeholders such as the agricultural community. The deal would restrict what wildfire victims could claim against a culpable utility in return for adherence to modernized wildfire mitigation efforts — clearing vegetation, fitting equipment with spark arresters and potentially burying power lines in some areas.
The cost of those mitigation efforts would also be passed on to ratepayers, lawmakers acknowledge.
The minerals committee worked up the measure this fall, but ultimately declined to sponsor a bill for the upcoming session to instead refine the proposed legislation afterward.
That’s not soon enough, according to Taylor. Earlier this month, he told WyoFile, that the coalition is getting “to work on an individual bill and sponsors.”
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