Kemmerer, Wyo., is on the front line of America's energy transition, with its coal plant slated to close and a nuclear plant in the works. But some think the rush to quit fossil fuels is impractical.KEMMERER, Wyo. — A few weeks before Christmas last year, Cliff Green, a mechanic at the Black Butte Coal mine in southern Wyoming, received the dreaded pink slip, after four years of steady work.
One view is that Wyoming, built on fossil fuels and long one of America's top energy producing states, with major wind and solar projects coming online, is on the front lines of America's transition to lower carbon energy. "They think they can change something that doesn't really need to be changed as far as I'm concerned. If it's been this way for a hundred years, why would we change it now?" Green asks.Green's is a pretty common sentiment in Wyoming, the nation's top coal producing state.
The pitch is, it should supplement jobs that will soon be lost when the legacy coal power plant here is decommissioned next year."Our agenda isn't to muddy up the planet by any stretch of the imagination. It's to make a living," says Bill Thek, Kemmerer's mayor. "It keeps people working. It keeps families here and for a little town like ours, keeping your family around is important to us," Thek says.A source of local pride, a statue of J.C. Penney, who opened up the first location in his department store chain in Kemmerer in 1902.A source of local pride, a statue of J.C. Penney, who opened up the first location in his department store chain in Kemmerer in 1902.
"That in no way is a burden for us. That, in fact, is an opportunity for us," Levesque says."Because if you look at how you make electricity in an advanced reactor, it's not that much different from how you make electricity in a coal plant."
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