Wyo Lawmakers Keep Carbon Capture Despite EPA Ruling

Recently, the EPA declassified CO2 as a pollutant, since CO2 promotes life on planet  Earth.

Additionally, it has been demonstrated that CO2 is the weakest of the greenhouse gases.

Calls for deregulation of the gas have been long and loud since 2009.

Back in 2009, the EPA declared CO2 a "pollutant" that must be regulated in an effort to fight what some see as human-caused climate change.

New EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is following through with plans to end the EPA's 2009 "endangerment finding" that expanded the EPA's reach on 'climate change'-related activities.

This is a major move by the federal government.

The "endangerment finding" provided a key legal underpinning for regulating heat-trapping gases from cars, power plants, and more under the Clean Air Act.

Much is about to change with its repeal.

But so far, Wyoming's legislators are refusing to repeal state laws regarding carbon capture and storage.

Recently, in a meeting in Casper, Wyoming, state lawmakers debated how effective carbon capture is as a tool to promote the burning of Wyoming coal.

Carbon capture and sequestration has been used as an attempt to appease those who might be against using Wyoming coal and electricity that is produced in the state.

Gov. Mark Gordon argued that the current law is effective and should be given more time to produce results.

The lawmakers voted down a draft bill that threatened to gut carbon capture efforts, even though carbon capture is still not proven to work effectively at actually capturing and storing CO2.

“Even if you have 100 percent capture from the capture equipment, it is still worse, from a social cost perspective, than replacing a coal or gas plant with a wind farm because carbon capture never reduces air pollution and always has a capture equipment cost.”  (Stanford Report).

Mandating that Wyoming power plants capture and store CO2 also raises utility costs for something that has not proven any benefits.