President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on rolling back many of the climate-oriented, energy-transition policies of his predecessor. That’s led many of his supporters and the fossil fuel industry to celebrate and many environmentalists to panic. Yet amid these polarized reactions is a lot of uncertainty – especially in an energy-rich state like Wyoming.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Caitlin Tan recently talked to college students about what’s on their minds as Trump gets ready to take office. She posed their questions to two academics from the University of Wyoming’s College of Business.
Rob Godby is an associate professor and researches energy and public policy. Matt Burgess is an assistant professor and focuses on the political polarization and macroeconomics of climate change.
Burgess started the conversation by discussing the current lay of energy policy in America.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Matt Burgess: The last three presidential terms, including the Biden administration, Trump's first term and Obama's second term, have been very good for renewables, very good for oil and gas and not very good for coal. I expect that that's broadly going to continue, largely because many of the important drivers of these trends exist outside of the presidency, so they're at the state and local level and they're in the marketplace.
Those trends are popular. Americans, broadly, like all of the above. They want something done on climate change by about two or three to one. There's strong support for oil and gas. There's not strong support at all for phasing out fossil fuels.
Rob Godby: Renewable energy and natural gas make generating electricity from coal just uneconomic, and so it's become the last choice among the primary ones in electricity generation, and that's going to continue. If we look at Wyoming, it’s been in a decline in coal production for over the last decade.
People get excited about Donald Trump if they're in the fossil fuel sector, they might get worried if they're in the climate change sector, and I think there are reasons for both of those reactions, but the bottom line is, we just don't know until we have some more concrete policy proposals.
Caitlin Tan: So let's take a look at the finer details of what we might see. I was actually recently at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs, an area known for energy – like coal, natural gas and trona.
I recorded some student questions. Here's the first one.
Hagan DeWitt: With the new presidential change, what kind of changes are we going to be looking at with oil drilling and fracking?
RG: Probably less restriction on federal lands for production of oil and natural gas. What's going to be the fly in the ointment is what happens with international prices, particularly for oil. That's really going to be the determinant.
MB: It seems pretty certain that the Trump administration will undo the pause on LNG [liquified natural gas] export terminals, which if global conditions for natural gas continue to be favorable, could be good for the natural gas industry.
The second thing to watch is permitting reform, and that has implications for oil, gas and renewables.
CT: So Wyoming's Governor Mark Gordon has said himself, climate change is something we need to address. His strategy has been an ‘all of the above energy’ policy, meaning we reduce our climate warming emissions by using renewables, but also find cleaner ways to produce traditional energy, like using carbon capture on coal fired power plants. Do we think Wyoming will still have an appetite for this ‘all of the above strategy’ under Trump's presidency?
MB: I would say the American public definitely will, and the market definitely will nationally. The ‘all of the above’ approach is very popular. Most people do think climate change is real and want something done about it. Most people do not want to get rid of their fossil fuels. Most people like cheap energy, and most people like renewables. And we're in a state that has lots of fossil resources, lots of wind resources and great geology for carbon capture. Nuclear is another really interesting one to watch.
RG: Wyoming bucks the trend, no pun intended, across a lot of different things. So on renewables, they're far less popular here. While the governor does direct energy policy, we have a new legislature. Certainly, there's a lot of energy there, again, no pun intended, around coal – if they can sum it up.
But Governor Gordon's plan was really embracing new technologies, and there were a lot of energy incentives under the Biden administration for those new energy technologies. So, again, with this new administration, there's a lot of uncertainty around how things might get undone, and then the question is always: unintended consequences.
MB: Quick note I’ll add that I think is interesting, is that I believe that all of President-elect Trump's proposed cabinet appointments related to environment and energy are people who are on the record with all of the above type views.
CT: Rob, you brought up the Freedom Caucus who now have the majority in Wyoming's House of Representatives. Some of those members have hinted at climate change denialism, supporting more pro-coal policy, possibly rolling back some carbon capture efforts. Do you think that at least represents a little bit of a vibe shift?
RG: So emphasizing coal is really difficult. We ship out more than 90 percent of the coal that we produce. So really what determines what happens to coal is what people decide in other states, and mainly that's being determined by the market.
If you were to roll back carbon capture, interestingly, that might be something that would actually reduce the use of coal in the state. Carbon capture, in part, is being considered because it's being forced on the utilities in this state. So it's funny how these ideologically driven policies might have unintended consequences in the other direction.
MB: An example underscoring that point is Exxon’s CEO was just in the news recently urging the new Trump administration to not roll back too many of President Biden's climate and energy policies for exactly this reason: that certainty is really important to the long term investments.
CT: So Bill Gates's nuclear power plant is slated to open in the Kemmerer area by 2030, and the hope is for a lot of jobs in southwest Wyoming. In fact, Western Wyoming Community College is even creating a nuclear associate degree. Here's student Hunter Daley on nuclear:
Hunter Daley: Is that going to be more on a wide scale across the state of Wyoming? Is this election going to speed up that process?
MB: Nuclear power is widely seen as a major source of clean energy in the long term. But it's unlike most industries, at least in part because of the regulations, it's gotten more expensive to build over time, whereas usually industries get cheaper to build over time. So the growth is really stalled out in nuclear. We'll have to see what happens in terms of the technology, now that nuclear is having this bipartisan resurgence. I wouldn't expect much change, say, in the next five years, just given the pace of how these projects go, but in the next 10 and 20 years, who knows?
RG: Kemmerer is a laboratory for the country – this is a brand new technology. But under the Biden Administration, the Department of Energy asked TerraPower to put together a proposal for where they might build four or five other plants like this. So where are those locations? Likely up in the Powder River Basin, where the transmission infrastructure already exists, possibly in the Dakotas and in Utah.
CT: So let's dive a little deeper on Wyoming's economy. Here's student Errol Asper:
Errol Asper: Wyoming’s economy is based a lot on energy. Is there reason for an average Wyomingite to be optimistic about the future of Wyoming's agencies, like schools and different things like that, based on the outcome of the election?
RG: So that's really the big question, right? We know that natural gas has been in a decline for the last decade. Coal has been on a decline for more than a decade. Those trends are probably not going to change. The most recent consensus estimate that we've made for the state is that we may have peaked in oil production. So long term, Wyoming's dependence on fossil fuels is a risk. That means that short of finding other revenue sources, our public services are at risk unless we raise taxes. And that brings us to our new legislature, and the number one rally cry from the Freedom Caucus is actually to reduce taxes. So it's one thing to be in opposition, it's another thing to be in power.
CT: I'm curious what you think about how actual Wyomingites might react to policy changes, especially the folks who are trying to make the energy transition as smooth as possible. I'm thinking like city planners, people building new housing projects for anticipated growth. I think this student question gets at that point:
Gabby Grajeda: I was wondering how the nuclear program is going to impact our town. Like, do we have enough room for everybody to live?
CT: Do we see infrastructure and town revitalization plans continue, even if there is some policy shift away from some of these newer energy projects?
RG: Given the scale of our towns, which are very small, large projects can be really disruptive. The real question is, how long might that development be there, right? If you build a water system for a town of a certain size, and the activity goes on for a decade and then they leave, you've overbuilt. So it's going to be one of the things the new folks in the legislature are going to have to deal with.
On the other side, we do actually have a housing shortage.
MB: This might come up immediately with property tax reform, which for counties that are not getting a lot of mineral royalties can make up a pretty substantial fraction of their budgets.
RG: If you cut property taxes, where does the money come from to backfill those budgets?
CT: A lot of students asked something along the lines of what Nyah Bowhay asked:
Nyah Bowhay: I was just wondering if, with our way of life, we will ever be able to live? Like will we just never be able to afford anything?
MB: By almost every measure, the country and the world keeps getting better. Now, certainly, there are some wrinkles to that, and housing affordability for young people is one of those wrinkles.
RG: In fact, since the election, and actually leading up to the election, we started seeing interest rates rising on mortgages, mainly in part because of the resurgence in support for Trump and the likelihood that he might win. Among economists, it's understood that Trump's policies are probably much more inflationary. He has proposed much more in the way of tax cuts, which will mean more borrowing, which means the government will drive up interest rates just because they have to satisfy their own deficits by borrowing to cover them. He also has a pretty major tariff policy which is likely to drive up inflation, and that drives up interest rates as well.
CT: Any other lingering forecasts, thoughts?
RG: Broadly speaking, people are very concerned about trends that have gone on that traditional mainstream economic policy has not really addressed. Things like income inequality and people being left behind. It's a really interesting political and economic time. Certainly, the election of Donald Trump is a symptom of that – people really are asking for change. Whether he and his administration can deliver is a whole other question.
