WYOMING

Home to 587,618 people in 2024 spread out over a vast 97,093 square miles, Wyoming is the least populated state in the nation with a population density lower than any state except Alaska. Wyoming has the Rocky Mountains to the west and High Plains to the east. Because it is in the rain shadow of the Rockies, the state is fairly arid, though it has a lot of glaciers and snowpack. Almost half of Wyoming is owned by the federal government, and the state is home to many national parks and monuments, including Yellowstone, the country’s first national park. Wyoming was the first territory in the nation to grant women the right to vote. It was also the first state to elect a female governor all the way back in 1925. 

CLIMATE IMPACTS

Wyoming is vulnerable to increasing heat, melting snowpack and glaciers, reduced water availability, and more frequent and severe wildfires. 

• In 2020, Wyoming and the rest of the Northern Great Plains experienced an average of 159 days a year with temperatures below freezing. It is projected that, as the planet continues to warm, the number could drop to an average of just 79 days per year by 2100. As the cold recedes, extreme heat will accelerate in the Great Plains region. Days where the maximum temperature exceeds 95 degrees Fahrenheit are projected to double by mid-century in Wyoming’s region. This is extremely harmful to Wyoming’s residents and agriculture industry. 
• The growing heat has additional consequences. Snowpack and glaciers are declining in Wyoming, reducing the reliability of surface water for cities, farmers and ecosystems. By 2030, many of Wyoming’s 1,500 glaciers are likely to retreat or disappear completely if we continue on our current climate path. With more warm days, snow will come later and melt earlier, leaving less time for accumulation. The reduced water availability combined with increasing temperatures threaten crops and animal agriculture in Wyoming, as well as Wyoming’s local ecosystems. 
• Wyoming’s high temperatures and low water availability intensify the factors that contribute to wildfires: wildfires, drought, and dead trees. These are expected to increase threats to property, livelihoods and human health. 
• Rising temperatures, persistent drought and aquifer depletion could threaten the long-term sustainability of the Great Plains, with scientists hesitantly predicting a second Dust Bowl. This could have absolutely devastating effects on local agriculture, the industry to which the majority of land in the Great Plains is devoted, producing $92 billion in products each year. Climate change’s blow to agriculture will have a major negative impact on Wyoming’s economy. 

ENERGY 

Fossil fuels are the state’s biggest business. 

• Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state in the nation since 1988.
• Wyoming ranks among the top 10 states for both the largest natural gas reserves and the highest marketed natural gas production. 
• Wyoming is the eighth-largest crude oil-producing state in the nation, accounting for nearly 3% of U.S. total crude oil output. 
• All of this energy output makes Wyoming the biggest net energy supplier in the United States. It’s large energy producing sector and small population makes it, after Louisiana, the second most energy-intensive state economy in the nation and the state fourth in per capita energy consumption. 
• For its own consumption, Wyoming relies mainly on coal, which produced 71% of the state’s electricity in 2023. Though coal has declined from a peak of 97% in 2003 and 86% in 2019, Wyoming still has the second highest share of electricity from coal in the nation, after West Virginia. 
• Wind power has more than doubled since 2019, generating 21% of the state’s electricity and making Wyoming 12th in the nation for wind generation. 
• Wyoming has some of the largest wind resources in the nation. Sustained winds are funneled through the state’s mountain passes and out across the high prairie, which enables Wyoming wind farms to operate at high capacity levels. The amount of wind-powered generating capacity installed in Wyoming has grown rapidly in the last decade, with about 3100 MW wind-powered capacity in 2023 and another 845 MW scheduled to come online in 2024. Several large wind projects are in development or under construction. Energy companies seek customers for Wyoming’s wind power in several western states that have significant renewable energy requirements. Consequently, there are several large transmission projects in Wyoming to transport the state’s wind-generated electricity to Nevada, Arizona, and California.
• Natural gas, hydroelectric and solar power account for 2% of the state’s electricity. 
• Renewables overall supplied 23% in 2023.

LEGISLATION

• Wyoming has no Renewable Portfolio Standard, though it has some net metering. 
• Wyoming’s only climate action plan dates back in 2013. Without any deadlines for carbon emission reduction or long-term planning, all action items were to be instigated in the year of publication. It called for no green energy, just the promotion of more natural gas. The plan mentions vague “efficient, effective regulation,” but does not go into specifics. It does call for some resource conservation, but calling the plan a “climate action plan” is weak at best. 
• In 2016, the Governor’s office issued an update to 2013’s energy policy noting initiatives that had been completed and in progress, including “a statewide carbon-dioxide pipeline network corridor” and a “wind tax”. 
• In 2018, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality launched an Emissions Reduction Pilot program to provide incentives for projects that make direct emission reduction impacts in the state. 
• In 2020 Wyoming passed a controversial law, House Bill 200, requiring utilities to look into the viability of carbon capture from coal-fired power plants. This law is currently being challenged in the 2025 legislative session. 
  •Wyoming’s Republican Governor Mark Gordon, in his 2021 State of the State speech committed to making the state carbon negative causing Wyoming’s Republican part to pass a vote of “no confidence” in him. In an interview with CBS on 12/10/23, he said, “We have tremendous wind resources. We have the largest reserves of uranium, important for nuclear energy, the largest coal producer, we're number eight in oil, number nine in natural gas. 83% of our energy is exported. That will soon include nuclear power (due to come on line in 2030) from a next-generation reactor to be built in Wyoming with a $500 million investment from Bill Gates. Huge wind farms already dot Wyoming's landscape, with the biggest one yet on the way.” This “biggest one” will be the largest wind farm in the U.S. with 600 turbines generating enough power for a million or two homes. The plan is to build a new 800 mile-long transmission line to send that power to California. Ground was broken in the summer of 2023.
• While many residents of Wyoming are alarmed by a changing climate, the state’s 2025 legislative session continued to feature climate denialism and misinformation. 
• In January, 2025, Wyoming state Senator Cheri Steinmetz introduced a bill titled “Make carbon dioxide great again - no net zero,” which would repeal state mandates for adding carbon sequestration and capture technology to aging coal-fired power plants. 

ANY CLIMATE COMMITMENTS THROUGH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?

The majority of states with no independent climate plan before 2024 produced a Priority Climate Action Plan under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program, but Wyoming is one of just five states that declined to participate in the program (The other four states are Florida, Kentucky, Iowa and South Dakota).