Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon might not know it yet, but he’s EcoRight.
“Wyoming has the solutions for our climate,” he said in conversation with the University of Wyoming’s Board of Trustees on Thursday. “We can take our coal products and we can make them part of the solutions.” He had a similar message for the Campbell County Chamber of Commerce earlier this month when he said that the state can do environmental regulation better than “anywhere else in the world” when it comes to mining coal and burning it to make electricity.
Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the country, but increased demand for natural gas and renewable energy had taken a toll on the local economy. Gordon would like to see the state build on the “legacy of being the first to define carbon sequestration, the first to put the legal framework in place and the first to really look at what kinds of assets do we have that we can retool to not just slow down carbon being released into our atmosphere, but to actually remove it from the atmosphere.” He championed a $5 million grant to the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources for “a 5-megawatt equivalent pilot project utilizing advanced coal-based generation technology that captures at least 75 percent of carbon emissions.”
And word on the street from A. Boz, who heard him speak, is that the governor can talk accurately, passionately, and reasonably for more than 20 minutes, unscripted, on climate change and solutions. We like that!