Wyoming was the first state to develop a comprehensive energy strategy plan in 2013, and efforts are in the works to make a new one for 2016.

Governor Matt Mead held a series of public meetings across the state to find out what Wyomingites want to see in the next plan and find out what needs to be improved.

“The purpose of these meetings is to review existing initiatives, to identify additional initiatives in order to support energy development, balanced with sound environmental stewardship,” Mead said in a press release.

The meeting in Cody was held on Wednesday evening with local politicians and residents in attendance, offering their 2 cents on what makes sense for balancing industrial and environmental needs.

The goals in the 2013 plan are more than 80 percent complete. It is made up of 45 initiatives in four categories, some are completed and others are partially done.

Progress on completing the 2013 plan can be tracked at energy.wyo.gov.

The governor’s goal was to have Wyoming lead in energy development and environmental stewardship, said Mead’s policy advisor Nephi Cole.

One in five American homes is powered by Wyoming energy, and tourism is the state’s second-largest industry, so the idea is to get residents involved in deciding how the state can best help both industries.

“We are the poster child for how to get energy out,” Cole said. “We are world-class in environmental stewardship and in energy production.”

Now the governor’s office is looking to update the objectives and initiatives — the things that need to be done.  

“We need to be talking about how to do what is best for the citizens in Wyoming,” Cole said. “Good government should work by listening — we are asking you guys for those things and to talk about your ideas to find out which you think are the most effective.”

Once this round of public discussions is complete, the governor’s office will have a live broadcast to discuss all of it, said Mead’s policy advisor Colin McKee. From there, the public will rank all the new initiatives and they will be presented to the governor for the 2016 plan.

Public comments can also be sent to the Governor’s Office at energy.strategy@wyo.gov. To review the current 2013 plan, Leading the Charge, go to http://governor.wyo.gov.

Is Wyoming’s coal the solution to 4,000 Chinese deaths per day?

In order for everyone to have their thoughts heard, attendees broke out into groups to discuss Wyoming’s new plan.

One of the breakout groups included local lawyer and former state legislator Colin Simpson and Park County residents Doug Smith and Daryl LeFevre. The chairman of the Wyoming Enhanced Oil Recovery Commission and commissioner on the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Tom Fitzsimmons.

• Health and education: Four thousand people die each day from air pollution in China due to the coal that’s burned to generate electricity containing higher concentrations of sulfur than the coal that’s mined in Wyoming, Simpson said. This statistic was recently confirmed by physicists at the University of California, Berkeley.

“There is so much anti-coal stuff, it is 10 to one anti-coal and more can be done to educate about the value of coal,” Simpson said. “We could save lives by burning our coal in China because they will continue to burn coal. It is weird to say you can burn coal and save lives, but you can if it is a lower sulfur coal and a cleaner coal.”

The state’s revenues will drop with coal use decreasing and natural gas values dropping as well, Simpson said. Meanwhile, American households will pay the price with increased utility costs.

More work needs to be done on educating the public about responsible development, Fitzsimmons said. But, getting information out was difficult in the past.

With the oil industry, the response to public inquiries was to put up a wall, Smith said.

“The public saw it as no transparency — killing us and taking our money,” Smith said. “The industry could have done a better job.”

State agencies could take a more active role in it, Fitzsimmons said. LeFevre suggested looking at the education system and how it teaches where electricity comes from. Simpson pointed out that those lessons come from the teachers, so the universities where teachers are taught need to be looked into as well.

• Money talks: By using oil from America, the country is saving hundreds of millions of dollars per day, Fitzsimmons said.

“It is OK to develop oil internally and people don’t realize that money is real,” Fitzsimmons said.

Using energy to transform an unusable form of energy into something else is not efficient, Fitzsimmons said.

“We have to get people to understand that consuming it pure is far better than trying to feel good about converting methane to hydrogen because it is cleaner coming out of the car,” Fitzsimmons said.

“What about the graduates leaving the state?” Smith asked. “Those are the people who will develop those technologies, and they are leaving here.”

LeFevre brought up President Barack Obama’s goal to increase renewable energy production, and questioned what it would make the country look like and doubted it was a feasible goal.

Doug Smith wanted to increase marketing of Wyoming’s energy and to give the state a more active voice.

“Being from Wyoming, our energy is under-valued,” Smith said.

The state needs to encourage enhanced oil recovery, work on retaining carbon dioxide, and get more value out of the resources here, Fitzsimmons said.   

“We are losing a valuable resource on C02,” Fitzsimmons said.

He suggested the state would benefit from creating its own marketplace for smaller C02 producers for enhanced oil recovery.

Fitzsimmons also said federal regulations overlap state ones, creating redundancy in the rules.

“The state needs to stay on top of federal rules to keep them from coming in — we have to be ahead of federal rules so we don’t get in the backseat,” Fitzsimmons said.

From there, the discussion went into who was stricter and more efficient on regulations, the state or the federal government.

Oregon and Washington state were mentioned several times during the discussion since their ports are needed for exporting Wyoming’s coal.

Wyoming needs to develop partnerships with neighboring states, but the question is, what do they need that Wyoming has, “and the answer was natural gas,” Fitzsimmons said.

The Western States Energy and Environment Symposium in 2010 didn’t turn out in Wyoming’s favor for coal, Simpson said.

“It is that type of discussion that could help the port issue,” Simpson said. “I am all for a deal; that is how those (partnerships) happen.”

• Environmental stewardship: When it comes to energy and environmental balance, sage grouse is bound to come up.

Whether sage grouse are listed as endangered this fall is a “very real threat” to development, Fitzsimmons said. Wyoming’s efforts to improve sage grouse numbers have made it a model example for what other states should do, LeFevre said.

Wyoming was recognized in front of Congress for the work that’s being done here to prevent listing sage grouse as endangered.

“If the bird isn’t listed in September, it is probably because of the work done in Wyoming,” Cole said, noting the negative impact listing sage grouse could have on agriculture as well as energy development. 

Other groups shared their discussion highlights, and many spoke about similar topics. Some focused on education and getting schools to teach students where energy comes from and how it is used — and offering the same information for adults too.

Much like the oil enhancement discussion, other groups talked about getting more start-to-finish products in Wyoming. The extraction occurs here, so it would make sense for development to do so as well, they said.