This is an up to date model of a narrative first revealed on Dec. 10, 2023. The authentic video will be seen right here.
The debate over power coverage is typically boiled right down to a caricature: Republicans are seen as favoring fossil fuels like oil and coal, and Democrats portrayed as selling extra climate-friendly wind and solar energy.
The actuality is rather more sophisticated, in fact, and one of the best proof of that could be present in one of many reddest states in America – Wyoming.
It is the nation’s main coal producing state by far, but its Republican governor, Mark Gordon, is rising as a number one voice selling climate-friendly power initiatives and actions to deal with the local weather disaster.
As we first reported final December, Mark Gordon is making an attempt to show that it’s doable to be each pink and inexperienced.
Gov. Mark Gordon: We wanted to be aggressive. And we wanted to essentially handle this problem.
Bill Whitaker: So you inform the individuals of Wyoming that local weather change is actual?
Gov. Mark Gordon: I do.
Bill Whitaker: And that it is pressing, it is an pressing disaster?
Gov. Mark Gordon: I’ve stated that. And I’ve gotten– I’ve gotten some pushback from that as nicely.
Bill Whitaker: I guess you have got. (laughter)
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In September, we met Mark Gordon, who’s in the course of his second time period as Wyoming’s governor, on the cattle ranch the place he grew up.
Gov. Mark Gordon: This is my dad’s previous saddle.
His household nonetheless owns this ranch, and he and his spouse additionally function one other about 40 miles away.
Bill Whitaker: How did rising up right here have an effect on your worldview?
Gov. Mark Gordon: I feel rising up right here gave me a– an unlimited appreciation for the world round us, and– and the ecological processes, and the climate. You simply are uncovered to it on an everyday, frequently.
Mark Gordon can also be a mountain climber who has seen glaciers receding as a consequence of a warming local weather. He says that helped persuade him to set a objective of constructing Wyoming not simply carbon impartial relating to CO2 emissions, however ultimately, carbon destructive.
Bill Whitaker: You first made this pledge of– internet destructive CO2 emissions at a 2021 State of the State speech. How did that go over?
Gov. Mark Gordon: I feel some individuals in all probability resented it. I feel usually it has been well-respected. It was, to– to a point, a daring transfer, and– and one which was meant to make a distinction in that dialogue about power sooner or later.
After Gordon repeated his net-negative emissions objective at an look at Harvard final yr, Wyoming’s Republican celebration handed a vote of “no confidence” in him. But he says warmth from the precise will not deter him from pursuing what he calls an “the entire above” power coverage.
Gov. Mark Gordon: Whatever you are going to do in power, in all probability you are going have one thing to do in Wyoming. We have great wind sources. We have the most important reserves of uranium, necessary for nuclear power, the most important coal producer, we’re quantity eight in oil, quantity 9 in pure fuel. 83% of our power is exported.
That will quickly embody nuclear energy from a next-generation reactor to be in-built Wyoming with a $500 million funding from Bill Gates. Huge wind farms already dot Wyoming’s panorama, with the largest one but on the way in which.
Bill Miller: Because the wind blows mainly 24/7, three hundred and sixty five days a yr.
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Bill Miller is president of the Power Company of Wyoming, which is starting to construct what would be the largest wind farm within the continental United States, in the course of a geographic break within the Continental Divide.
Bill Miller: All the winds which blow from west to east just about are funneled via this a part of the nation.
Miller drove to the highest of a spot referred to as Chokecherry Knob to present us a style of the wind.
Bill Whitaker: So when that is up and working, what number of generators can be out right here?
Bill Miller: Current plan requires 600 generators.
Bill Whitaker: And how a lot power will that generate?
Bill Miller: They’ll generate round 12 million megawatt hours of energy a yr.
Bill Whitaker: And that’s– and that is sufficient to energy what number of properties?
Bill Miller: Million, a million-two.
Wyoming would not have something near that many properties – it has the smallest inhabitants of any of the 50 states – so the plan is to construct a brand new 800 mile-long transmission line to ship that energy to California, which wants and desires it.
Bill Whitaker: What’s this going to value?
Bill Miller: The wind farm can be one thing north of $5 billion. Transmission line can be one thing north of $3 billion capital funding.
Bill Whitaker: That’s an enormous funding.
Bill Miller: Yes.
The mission is bankrolled by billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns the corporate Bill Miller runs, and who first made his fortune in oil.
Bill Miller: Society has spoken. That’s what this nation goes to go to, is renewable power. More importantly, it is a mission that contributes to the zero-carbon initiatives that– we strongly consider in. It’s going to occur. And that is one of the best place for it to occur.
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At this previous summer time’s windy groundbreaking ceremony for the transmission line, Bill Miller was joined not simply by Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, but in addition by two members of President Biden’s Cabinet.
Gov. Mark Gordon: The manner we have tried to navigate that is to search out one thing for everybody. And– I feel that is the–
Bill Whitaker: Is that doable?
Gov. Mark Gordon: Yeah. I feel it’s. Honestly, I feel if– if individuals are going to embrace how we get to a carbon impartial, carbon destructive future, it must be by saying, “We’re all going to be a bit bit higher by embracing innovation.”
If a single image can seize Wyoming’s power previous, current and future, this can be it: a completely loaded coal practice passing in entrance of an enormous wind farm. Remember, this state nonetheless produces extra coal than another, by far.
Dr. Holly Krutka: The chance that we are going to actually as a world transfer away from fossil fuels could be very low.
Holly Krutka runs the School of Energy Resources on the University of Wyoming. Before shifting to academia, she labored for Peabody, the most important coal firm in America.
Dr. Holly Krutka: 82% of– our international power consumption is fossil fuels.
Bill Whitaker: 82%?
Dr. Holly Krutka: 82%. It has not modified.
Because of that stark reality, Krutka and her colleagues are centered on taking the CO2 out of fossil fuels like coal earlier than it reaches the environment, with a expertise referred to as carbon seize and storage.
Dr. Holly Krutka: There are carbon seize and storage initiatives in America working proper now. There’s simply not sufficient. The seize facet, we’re there. Today.
Bill Whitaker: You can do it now?
Dr. Holly Krutka: Right now. Yes.
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Bill Whitaker: The expertise is there, however is it economically possible?
Dr. Holly Krutka: It will at all times be cheaper to do nothing than so as to add carbon seize and storage. If you need to cut back emissions, that is a part of the answer. We must resolve, is it price the price.
At the massive dry fork coal-fired energy plant close to Gillette, the University of Wyoming is working what it calls the Integrated Test Center. Some of the flue fuel that will in any other case go up the smokestack is siphoned off into labs like this one, the place the Japanese firm Kawasaki is testing strategies for making carbon seize extra economical. Wells, 10 thousand toes deep, have additionally been drilled to indicate that captured CO2 will be saved underground, perpetually.
Bill Whitaker: How large a deal would it not be to find– an reasonably priced option to seize carbon on the level of emission– say, in energy plants– all over the world?
Gov. Mark Gordon: It could be a sport changer, for sure.
Bill Whitaker: You know there are loads of naysayers who say that it is a pipe dream.
Gov. Mark Gordon: Uh-huh (affirm).
Bill Whitaker: It’ll by no means occur. What do you say to them? How do you persuade them?
Gov. Mark Gordon: Well, I say we’re making an attempt it. And I do know individuals will say, “Well, you are simply making an attempt to increase the lifetime of the coal mines.” I’m. But I’m additionally making an attempt to try this in a manner that’s going to do extra for local weather options than merely standing up a complete bunch of wind farms or sending up a complete bunch of solars.
With his “the entire above” method, Mark Gordon is making an attempt to place each type of power mission on a quick observe, together with Bill Miller’s enormous wind farm.
Bill Whitaker: How lengthy did you assume it was going to take once you began?
Bill Miller: When I initially began, I believed we may in all probability get this entitled and beneath development inside 5 years.
Bill Whitaker: And it has been 17?
Bill Miller: 17.
Bill Whitaker: Why so lengthy?
Bill Miller: Primarily, the allowing course of, the paperwork of the federal authorities.
Bill Whitaker: You informed me, developing right here, that the– the method was type of like a nightmare.
Bill Miller: It was tough. (snort) Maybe, “Nightmare,” is a bit bit too sturdy. But– it was a really tough course of.
Bill Whitaker: So how necessary is it to cut back regulatory and allowing limitations?
Gov. Mark Gordon: I feel it is huge. Permitting reform I feel is one in every of our greatest challenges at a federal stage. It is one thing that is being embraced– by each side.
Both the Biden administration and congressional Republicans have endorsed the thought of streamlining allowing for power initiatives. Actually doing it’s one other story. In Wyoming, Gov. Gordon has executed what he can.
Cully Cavness: One factor I can share is that it is a state that is very welcoming to innovators within the power house.
Cully Cavness is co-founder of an organization referred to as Crusoe Energy Systems. About 5 years in the past, it determined to deal with the issue of “flaring,” when fuel produced at oil wells is solely burned into the environment.
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Cully Cavness: If you can seize all of it it will energy about two-thirds of Europe’s electrical energy. It’s a really great amount of waste.
Bill Whitaker: And we’re simply burning it off.
Cully Cavness: We’re burning it off as a result of there is no pipeline there.
Cavness and his colleagues got here up with the unconventional thought of placing a small electricity-generating energy plant proper the place that fuel was being flared and wasted.
Cully Cavness: What we do is we faucet into that fuel line. We convey the fuel over to an influence technology system, after which that generates electrical energy, and we take that electrical energy immediately into our onsite knowledge heart to energy tons of or hundreds of computer systems, after which we community the computer systems to the skin world with fiber or satellite tv for pc web to get it offsite.
Bill Whitaker: So you’re taking a– knowledge heart and simply mainly put it on prime of the wellhead.
Cully Cavness: Exactly. It’s a contemporary knowledge heart in each manner once you’re standing within it. And then you definitely step out the door and also you’re in an oil area.
Crusoe Energy first used these electricity-gobbling knowledge facilities to mine bitcoin; Now most of that pc energy is being utilized by synthetic intelligence firms. The first place to allow them to do this, in 2018, was Wyoming.
Cully Cavness: That’s not essentially an thought that everybody’s going to embrace routinely proper off the bat earlier than it has been executed earlier than. Wyoming was. They invited us to return do it for the primary time right here. We did it at a small scale. We proved that it may work. And that helped us entice the funding and the opposite initiatives that had helped us scale to the place we’re immediately.
Bill Whitaker: How a lot of these– facilities do you have got up and working at present?
Cully Cavness: We’re approaching 200. By the top of the yr, we’ll have about 200 of our modular knowledge facilities deployed all through the United States and now internationally.
Bill Whitaker: So how do you assess your environmental affect?
Cully Cavness So immediately we’re working at a scale of greater than 20 million cubic toes of fuel per day that will have in any other case been flared and wasted. We’re stopping that flaring. It’s on the order of a number of hundred thousand automobiles per yr being taken off the highway when it comes to the averted emissions affect.
Bill Whitaker: Are you making an attempt to ship out a message to the remainder of the nation and even the remainder of the world? “If you have got a renewable or a climate-friendly thought, convey it right here, convey it to Wyoming.”
Gov. Mark Gordon: Love to. We, we need to be a part of the answer. There are some actually outstanding issues that if we– cease speaking about what we should not do and begin speaking about what we are able to do and the way we are able to embrace that future. And that is what we’re devoted to right here in Wyoming.
Produced by Rome Hartman. Associate producer, Sara Kuzmarov. Broadcast affiliate, Mariah B. Campbell. Edited by Jorge J. García.
