By Kennedy Maize
A Wyoming Republican legislator (Democratic legislators in Wyoming are only slightly more common than jackalopes) is hinting that he has a plan for a new coal-fired power plant in the state that leads the nation in coal production.
Rep. Scott Heiner from Green River in the southwestern corner of the Cowboy State, far from the coal-river Powder River Basin in the state’s northeast, hinted at his coal plant plans last week (Mar.6), offering few details and promising more about the project in mid-April.
The sketchy details Heiner, the GOP majority floor leader, provided in an interview with Cowboy State Daily offer concrete reasons for skepticism. It may turn out to be more pie in the sky than plant on the ground.
Heiner said an unnamed, existing Wyoming company would honcho site selection and complete the design and engineering phase for a coal-fired power plant with carbon capture to be used for enhanced oil recovery. He said the project would attract foreign investment and would win support from the Wyoming government.
“The state of Wyoming is going to stand by the process, stand by efforts to continue utilizing and developing our natural resources,” said Heiner. “This could transform our coal industry. It’s not a new concept and it’s utilized in other nations, but never in the United States. It’ll put out as much power as some of our coal-fired power plants. It looks very viable.”
Heiner claimed that $10 million in state and private matching funds would support the early stages of the project. The state Senate March 5 passed a bill that, according to the text, funds “an enhanced oil recovery stimulus for the use of carbon dioxide in enhanced oil recovery.” The bill is not yet law.
Heiner, 64, is an engineering graduate from Utah State University and is retired, having worked for Anadarko Petroleum, an oil and gas exploration and production company bought by Occidental Petroleum in 2019.
He has had a checkered political career. He ran twice unsuccessfully in primaries against the incumbent Republican legislator from the district, Thomas Crank. In the August 2020 primary, Heiner knocked off Crank and was elected to the House unopposed in November 2020, taking office in January. He was reelected last November for a term ending in 2027.
While Wyoming Democrats are an endangered species, that doesn’t mean there aren’t furious divisions among the dominant Republicans. The GOP’s “Freedom Caucus,” inspired by the far right U.S. House group of the same name, has been battling the long-entrenched conventional party establishment. In the November 2024 election, the hard liners won enough House seats to seize control. That’s how a relatively junior legislator such as Heiner was able to win a key role as House majority floor leader shepherding the caucus’s legislative agenda. He is a prominent Freedom Caucus member. As a result, the caucus was able to pass bills forwarding most of the group’s legislative priorities before the end of the 2025 session, which convened Jan. 17 and ended Friday (Mar. 7).
The Associated Press commented, “Always conservative, Wyoming is almost completely dominated by Republicans who control the governor’s office, congressional delegation and 91% of the Legislature. One result is that the differences between Freedom Caucus members and traditional Republicans have become more meaningful than those between Republicans and the state’s few Democrats.”
Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, in office since 2019, is a more traditional Republican and has battled and been reviled by some Freedom Caucus followers, particularly for his generally moderate position on global warming and how to respond to a changing climate.
A new coal-fired power plant would fly in the face of a long-term trend of coal plant closures, including in Wyoming. According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, 98 GW of coal-fired electric generating capacity has retired in the past 10 years. According to a 2023 report by the International Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the U.S. is on track to close half of its 2011 peak in coal capacity.
Wyoming has 12 operating coal-fired stations, many with multiple generating units. Oregon-based PacificCorp has the largest fleet of coal-fired plants in Wyoming, with 11 operating units. According to its Integrated resource plan, the company plans to close all but two of those plants by 2030.
The last coal-fired plant in Wyoming went into service in 2011, Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s 405-MW Dry Fork station in Gillette in the heart of the Powder River Basin. The North Dakota public power system has long championed carbon capture, particularly at its two-unit, 705-MW Milton R. Young lignite-fired plant near Center, N.D. The Dry Fork station includes the Wyoming Integrated Test Center and the Wyoming CarbonSAFE project, both research projects to investigate carbon capture technology.
The newest coal-fired power plant in the U.S. is the 900-MW Sandy Creek Energy Station in mid-Texas, which went into service in 2012. It burns Powder River Basin coal brought in by rail from Wyoming. The plant capacity is jointly owned by SCEA, a private-sector financial consortium led by LS Power, with 575 MW, Brazos Electric Power Cooperative (225 MW), and Austin’s Lower Colorado River Authority (100 MW).
If the Heiner gets down to the details of the mysterious plant he is touting, it may surprise him how much it will cost. Dry Fork came in at $1.35 billion, without carbon capture on board. Basin has estimated adding carbon capture to the Milton R. Young plant will cost about $2 billion. It’s hard to justify those costs when compared to other proven technologies, including natural gas, wind, and solar, all well suited to Wyoming.
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