The Eagle Butte coal mine outside Gillette, Wyo.
Photo: Kristina Barker for The Wall Street JournalWyoming Gov. Mark Gordon thinks climate change is an urgent problem, but he is also making a case to keep using one of his state’s biggest resources: coal.
Wyoming produces nearly half the coal burned by U.S. power plants. As coal use nationally has fallen because of low natural-gas prices, revenue from coal in Wyoming has plummeted. Coal severance taxes, one source of revenue, fell by more than 25% over the past decade to $194 million last year, according to the state Department of Revenue.
Mr. Gordon, a Republican, is urging the GOP-controlled state legislature, which opened its session Monday, to adopt a raft of measures to support coal. He wants to spend $1 million to market it more effectively and $25 million to fund the development of technology to cut carbon emissions from coal to zero.
“I have seen glaciers receding,” Mr. Gordon said of climate change in an interview. “I would say there’s an emergency and an absolute need to address it quickly. We can do it better with coal.”
The governor faces an uphill battle because most Wyoming coal is used in states where the retirement of coal-fired power plants shows no signs of slowing. Natural gas, solar and wind account for a growing share of the nation’s electricity.
Members of the Republican-led legislature cheered loudly this past weekwhen the governor said in his State of the State address that he would defend the state’s coal industry. Several have already introduced bills, including one to promote coal exports.
This year utilities are expected to burn 490 million tons of coal, less than half the record 1.04 billion tons consumed in 2007, according to IHS Markit. Coal exports are expected to fall to 78 million tons this year, down from 116 million tons two years ago.
As Trump administration policies struggle to halt coal’s decline, the industry has turned to states for help. Last month the West Virginia Coal Association asked state lawmakers to do everything “humanly possible” to help the industry.
“The whole focus here is to keep the plants and mines operating,” said Chris Hamilton, senior vice president of the association, who made the request.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon wants the state to develop new ways to use coal that don’t put carbon into the atmosphere.
Photo: Jacob Byk/Associated PressLast year West Virginia lawmakers cut severance taxes paid by coal companies and offered a new tax incentive for companies that open or expand coal mines. A bill this year would require utilities to maintain their coal use in West Virginia and give the state a chance to intervene ahead of a closure.
In Indiana, a similar bill would require utilities to provide notice before shutting a coal plant and obtain approval from the state utility commission. Ohio lawmakers provided subsidies to two coal plants this fall, including one located in Indiana.
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A Wyoming law enacted last year requires public utilities to try to sell a coal-fired power plant before shutting it.
Yet many states are moving in the opposite direction by embracing renewables and the shift away from coal.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, ordered the state in October to develop a plan to join nine states in New England and the mid-Atlantic region that are capping carbon emissions. Republican state lawmakers have said they would try to block the move through legislation or a lawsuit.
In Wyoming, Mr. Gordon, a rancher who describes himself as an environmentalist, said he wants the state and the University of Wyoming to develop new ways to use coal that don’t put carbon into the atmosphere. He said that he supports wind and solar energy but that abandoning coal is shortsighted because renewables and other fuels won’t be able to meet energy needs over the next several decades.
Researchers at the university already have 14 patents to use coal to make products from asphalt to electrodes with a carbon-neutral process. They are working on technology to combust coal and capture carbon dioxide emissions at power plants without flames.
“What Gov. Gordon is doing is clearly motivated by trying to preserve revenue to our state coffers so we can run the state, but also in recognition that there isn’t a viable solution if we don’t extend the life of fossil fuels,” said Mark Northam, executive director of the university’s School of Energy Resources.
John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the environmental-advocacy group would evaluate any technology that eliminated carbon emissions from coal. But absent that, he said, “There’s not going to be a role for coal in a world facing a climate crisis.”
Mr. Gordon said he wants to set a more ambitious goal for cutting carbon emissions than other states. “We want to be the first state with a carbon negative standard,” he said.
Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com
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