Wyoming Transition From Coal To Wind Is A Bellwether

In yet another example of how quickly green energy alternatives are coming online, replacing fossil fuel and particularly coal, The NY Times has a story today about the sudden transition from coal to wind in Wyoming.  As the coal industry collapses all over the country, Wyoming stands to lose over 10,000 jobs related to that industry. At the same time, in what is now the ironically named Carbon County, Wyoming, the largest wind farm in the country will soon be opening and hopes to provide enough energy to power over a million homes.  That is much more than the state of Wyoming needs, so the operator of the farm, the Anschutz Corporation, is also looking to build a power line to take that excess energy to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Construction on both these large projects is expected to begin within a year. In addition, a Venezuelan company is also looking to build a similar, large wind farm nearby. Even Wyoming’s Republican, climate-change skeptic governor is looking to bring more manufacturing work for wind energy into the state.

Wind power will not provide nearly the same amount of jobs that are being lost in Wyoming’s coal industry and those coal workers are leaving the industry and the state rapidly.  That job loss is one of the negative side-effects of our transition to green energy, as the fossil fuel industry is much more labor intensive than its replacements. It would be nice if our elected representatives had at least a plan to help these displaced workers transition more easily into other jobs and industries. Because, as Wyoming shows, that transition is coming more and more quickly.