Wyoming is a leading driver of energy, but drought and growing demand are posing challenges. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Under Secretary Kyle Haustveit recently visited the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) in Colorado. It’s a federal agency that operates critical electric transmission infrastructure across a 15-state region, including Wyoming. While on the road, he spoke to Wyoming Public Radio’s environment reporter Teal Davis about the outlook for nuclear power, data centers and if rates will ever go down.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Kyle Haustveit: WAPA, they play a critical role. They've got infrastructure that covers about 26,000 circuit miles, from Minnesota all the way to California, serving 40 million customers. Rates have gone up in the past. Part of that is just the continued investment into the system and the way that utilities work, they have a rate recovery option.
When capital is invested, the funds are guaranteed to be paid back to the investor, and those funds are paid back through rates from the rate payers. So as long as we're continuing to grow and invest, there is normally upward pressure on the rates. That being said, thanks to President Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, certain demand sources are being told and agreeing to this is a partnership, to bring their own power and pay for T&D, transmission and distribution, upgrades.
There are going to be opportunities where we see downward pressure on rates, and we've already seen a couple across the U.S. where there have been reduction in rates. Part of that has been related to some of the great work going on in the DOE through our Energy Dominance Financing group. They are providing loans to utilities in order to reduce the cost of capital – so reducing the interest rates – and in those agreements, we're ensuring that those savings are passed on to the rate payers that are reliant on those electrons.
Teal Davis: Kind of shifting focus a little bit, another hot button issue for many people in Wyoming has been data centers. Vice President Vance recently said that these centers should be required to build their own power generation rather than drain local energy grids. Are there any specific regulations that the DOE is currently considering that would require data centers to do that?
KH: That's been true across the Trump administration. We've had these hyperscalers voluntarily come to the table and sign the pledges that they will bring their own power. But it's not only the power, it's also the transmission and distribution costs. In some areas, that makes up nearly two-thirds of the cost of an electron delivered to a household.
It's important that we spend time with the locals. I grew up in North Dakota in a small town. I spent a year and a half in Gillette. I spent a couple years in Western Wyoming. I spent most of my life in small rural communities. We have got to make sure we prioritize Americans, and we're doing that in the Trump administration through the Ratepayer Protection Pledge and a plethora of investments, both from Energy Dominance Financing, in grant funding, over and over and over again, we’re making these investments.
TD: One of the big creeping up booming industries perhaps here in Wyoming is nuclear. Last year a company that wanted to site a nuclear microreactor manufacturing facility in a small town in Wyoming actually scrapped the project due to Wyoming's ban on spent nuclear waste fuel. Meanwhile, our neighbors over in Idaho are considering becoming a repository. How do you think the nation should handle its spent nuclear fuel, especially with the industry looking to grow?
KH: We need to partner with the states. We have got to engage with the local communities and get their input.
The secretary said this in his hearing a year and a half ago when asked a similar question. Secretary [Chris] Wright said, "Look, we're gonna go to the states and ask which states want to be considered to be home to spent waste." We've initiated a RFI [request for information] for nuclear life cycle innovation campuses. We had five states raise their hand saying, "We're interested. We want to be considered. We want to learn more. We want to understand what the potential benefits are to our state and our constituents." So we have estimated $50 billion of investment that would go into these nuclear life cycle innovation campuses, up to 25,000 jobs and a $10 billion tax base for those workers and for those activities.
We can't focus solely on developing new reactors. We can't focus solely on generating new fuels. We've got to handle the entirety of the life cycle of nuclear if we want America to lead yet again in nuclear.
TD: We're seeing a lot of conversations about growth and energy, and you're talking about state-specific conversations. What role do you see Wyoming, Idaho and Montana playing in the administration's push to return uranium enrichment to American soil?
KH: There's a tremendous known resource in Wyoming. In my private sector role when I lived in Wyoming, we had oil and gas wells in and around some of the highest quality uranium deposits in Wyoming.
We want to make sure we're partnering with industry. We just had a report come out from the National Petroleum Council that is setting up the framework for us to work across the aisles with the appropriators to invest in exploring for, characterizing, and responsibly and efficiently developing all of the American resources that make up our balance sheet, and uranium is absolutely critical.
For several years, we saw U.S. uranium production go to near zero. We have seen that ramp up in recent years, in just the last year and a half or so, and that's because of the work that's going on, thanks to President Trump's four executive orders that he signed last year that unlocked now five new reactor designs reaching criticality.
For the first time in nearly 50 years, new reactors have gone critical. That is taking place right now. We're living the nuclear renaissance. That includes the amazing deposits of uranium in the state of Wyoming.
When we look at Idaho, that's home to Idaho National Laboratory, one of the 17 national labs in the lab system within DOE, and it's home to the reactors that have gone critical in recent months. Three of the five are right there in Idaho. So the brightest minds in the world, when it comes to nuclear, are in Idaho, and they're solving the problems that we're talking about as we speak.
TD: We've covered a lot of different types of energy. Wyoming and much of the Mountain West has been in a prolonged drought. I'm interested to hear your perspective on the Colorado River and the electricity that it generates being under question as a result of that drought.
KH: The world goes through cycles and we go through different snowpacks. We've seen some of our dams at low levels that will put pressure on the amount of electricity that come out of our hydroelectric dams. So we're continuing to look at expanding our base load power generation to include hydro, but make sure that we can get the electrons to the Americans that need it most, even in times of drought.
Some of that is just simply increasing the capacity factor of existing generation. We are looking at additional opportunities to expand baseload generation, and one of those examples is simply getting a higher capacity factor out of the existing coal plants. Over the years, more and more environmental restrictions have limited the amount of runtime for our coal plants.
On average, our coal fleet of 160 gigawatts runs at less than 50% capacity factor. That's one of the many examples of where we can go to produce more baseload electricity without increasing build-out in the near term to respond to times of drought when our hydroelectric system is unable to deliver the same amount of electricity that it has in the past.
