Wyoming has some of the world’s best winds, as anyone knows who’s battled with wind-whipped tractor-trailers along I-80.
So it’s no surprise that wind turbines have been sprouting in the state’s wide-open spaces at a rapid rate, upping its total wind-power-generating capacity by more than 30 percent in just one year. Wyoming is also the nation’s principal energy colony: It’s the leading coal producer in the United States and ranks in the top three states for natural gas production. Yet Wyoming hasn’t exactly welcomed wind power with open arms.
The state showed its green bona fides by banning wind farms from prime sage grouse areas, putting about half of the state’s best winds off-limits. Then it repealed its sales tax exemption for turbines, while some of its most prominent public officials blasted the industry for running roughshod over Wyoming’s wild lands and wildlife. Now, the governor has just signed a bill to tax energy from wind farms, and the turbine pushers are in a frenzy of worry. They’re even mimicking their colleagues in the oil and gas industry, saying the tax might chase them out of the state.
But the wind tax could be the best thing that ever happened to wind in Wyoming.
 In case you hadn’t been paying attention, Wyoming is run by the fossil fuel industry. That’s not just because of a lot of industry lobbying, or because oil and gas finances most of the state’s campaigns, or even because quite a few Wyoming politicians have worked in the oil, gas or coal industry at one time or another. It’s because the state’s coffers are as dependent on fossil fuel tax revenues as a baby is on its mother’s breast.
In any given year, the gas and oil industry in Wyoming contributes more than $1.5 billion to state and local government budgets through severance taxes, royalties, sales and use taxes and property taxes. Coal producers add another $800 million or more annually. Those are direct payments and don’t include the tens of thousands of jobs that the fossil fuel industry brings to the state — the coal mines alone employ some 18,000 people at an average salary of $65,000. Meanwhile, the wind industry contributed just $3.8 million in property taxes this year, in addition to a bit for state land leases. (The sales tax exemption remains in effect until the end of this year.)
So when Wyoming seems to be picking on wind even as it kowtows to fossil fuels, it’s because of practical, not ideological, considerations. That explains why, when the state moved to protect sage grouse “core areas” in hopes of avoiding an Endangered Species Act listing for the bird, it carefully drew the lines so as to leave the oil and gas hotspots free from regulation. State officials readily admit that the core areas were drawn to keep the cash flowing and the roughnecks working. Meanwhile, many of the windy sweet spots were overlain with core areas, putting them off-limits to turbines.
The proposed wind tax, which breezed through the Legislature, levies a modest $1-per-megawatt-hour on turbines. At current levels of wind-power generation, it would generate $5 million or so in annual revenue. That could easily double or triple in just a few years; the Power Company of Wyoming’s proposed wind farm near Rawlins could — by itself — triple the state’s wind-generating capacity. Wind will never generate as much money for the state as oil and gas and coal, but then wind isn’t going to run out, either, or be made obsolete by climate-change concerns. The wind tax is a reliable, long-term investment.
Even better, though, it puts wind power in the same category as fossil fuels in Wyoming, making it subject to the state’s unofficial motto: “Bring on your energy projects, so we can tax the hell out of them.” When those turbines start adding some money to Wyoming’s schools and other state programs, people are more likely to see them in a favorable light. Or, at least — as they’ve done with oil and gas -- they’ll be more likely to ignore their impacts.
My advice to the wind-industry folks who are in a tizzy over this tax? Relax. It may make the economics tougher when it comes to building a wind farm, but it could soften the political opposition to turbines, which seems to grow daily.
And the “we’ll go somewhere else if you tax us” rhetoric that you stole from your oil and gas counterparts? Lighten up, please. We need wind power, not hot air.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is the magazine’s editor in Paonia, Colorado. |