Forum examines how coal communities can reinvent themselves

By Greg Johnson
Gillette News Record
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
GILLETTE — As Wyoming’s coal industry continues to settle into its “new normal” operations that have seen significant decreases in production and coal-related jobs, it’s going to take radical thinking and action to reinvent coal.
The No. 1 priority is to move beyond the divisive — and sometimes downright nasty — philosophical and political divide about fossil fuels, said Mike Easley, CEO of Powder River Energy Corp. during Monday’s opening morning session of a two-day think tank gathering at Cam-plex Energy Hall.
Showing an aerial photograph of the Dry Fork Station coal-fired power plant north of Gillette, Easley said it represents the ultimate in technology and efficiency in coal-fired power plants. Basin Electric owns the plant and operates it with Black Hills Power and the Basin Electric Power Cooperative.
That perception, however, is subjective, he said.
“There is also a group of people who think this is the end of civilization,” Easley told about two dozen people attending the conference, titled Strengthening Economies in Wyoming: A Forum for Coal-Reliant Communities.
“Between those two conversations, not only as it relates to energy, trying to solve problems and work together is becoming more and more and more divisive,” he said. “And quite frankly, the divisiveness is really the currency in our dialogue.”
By focusing on those political, regulatory and philosophical differences, the issue has become more about who’s going to win the argument rather than finding innovative ways to rethink how we use coal and the carbon dioxide created when it’s burned to produce electricity, Easley said.
“That’s the challenge that we have,” he said. “But if you don’t have a safe place to have the dialogue, you’ll never be able to make those breakthroughs and solve the challenges we have.”
‘Moonshot thinking’
Those breakthroughs will come through what Easley calls “moonshot thinking,” where people find ways to make what was previously thought impossible mainstream reality.
“The thing about breakthroughs is that the day before you have that breakthrough it was a pretty crazy idea,” he said.
One way to change the culture of divisiveness is not to oppose a changing culture that more and more is accepting climate change and looking toward renewable forms of energy, Easley said. Instead, think of those obstacles as opportunities.
He used electric vehicles as an example. It’s an idea that for decades has been possible, but impractical, but now is on the verge of making some breakthroughs that will allow them to rival conventional vehicles for performance and miles driven without a recharge.
He said that’s an opportunity for moonshot thinking: Why not come up with a way that coal can produce that electric energy to power those vehicles?
While that may seem far-fetched, he also said that the research that’s being done to perfect and commercialize CO2 capture and repurposing can reshape the power industry far beyond where it is now. That’s why Basin Electric and Powder River Energy are so invested in the Integrated Test Center located at Dry Fork Station, Easley said. The potential solutions that could come from the research into carbon capture done there and elsewhere could lead to a paradigm shift for electricity production.
He summed up his point with a couple of simple questions: What if CO2 became the most valuable product a power plant could produce? Does producing electricity then become simply a byproduct of that?
“We need to take the opportunity for moonshot thinking to inspire,” Easley said. “That’s very important.”
Something needs to change
That the energy and carbon industries are changing is happening, whether the Powder River Basin likes it or not. How that affects Wyoming and what those changes eventually evolve into is critical for the local and state economies, said Mark Christensen, chairman of the Campbell County Commission.
Before the bust of 2016, the county and state were flush with money from coal mining, which had pumped up the county’s assessed valuation to a record $6.2 billion in 2015.
“Coal has always paid the base bills,” he said, pointing out that about 75 percent of the state’s budget is revenue from mineral production.
That the economy is so dependent on a single, volatile source of money has to change, he said. More than just diversifying the state’s mineral-based economy, Wyoming needs to target and develop industries that can rival coal in providing high-paying, desirable jobs.
“It’s important you find jobs that sustain that level of employment,” Christensen said, pointing out that the average income in Campbell County is about $83,000 a year, mostly because of high-paying coal jobs.
“Not all jobs are equal,” he said.
When those jobs are lost, it takes two or three jobs in other industries to make up for each one, which isn’t a sustainable way to grow, he said.
Any port will do
While all that moonshot thinking and efforts to diversity are happening, Wyoming also has to find ways to maximize the potential for its base product — thermal coal.
To do that, the political blockades put up by Oregon and Washington that prevent the development of coal ports has become a priority not only for Wyoming but for its representatives in Congress, said U.S. Sen. John Barrasso.
Fresh off Saturday’s vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both Barrasso and U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi opened Monday’s forum with promises that they’re working to clear the way for those western coal ports.
“Exports and Washington (State) is our next fight,” he said, adding that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has “weaponized the Clean Water Act” in an illegal attempt to keep coal off the rails going through his state.
While President Donald Trump has been making good on his campaign promises to roll back many of the Obama-era regulations on coal and fossil fuel production, those can’t be thought of as permanent solutions to the industry’s problem, Enzi said.
In another two or four years when a new presidential administration is in power, “who knows what will happen then?” he said.
That’s why innovation and moonshot thinking is so important, Barrasso said, adding Wyoming and the PRB have one big advantage.
“The people here still believe the future is ours to shape,” he said.