“What we are basically seeing is the beginning of the end of coal mining in southwestern Wyoming, which has gone on since before statehood.”

We ran this Saturday:

Lex Anteinternet: Mixed news for coal. .. and a glance at Glenrock....: Wyoming's largest utility to retire majority of coal-fired power plant units by 2030 Wind Farm north of Glenrock as viewed from Mu...

The Tribune has since looked at this in more depth and basically has come to the conclusion that Pacific Power is making a major shirt away from coal, and towards renewables.

This trend is too big too ignore.  And an economist at UW, Rob Godby, hasn't.  He's been quoted in the Tribune as saying:

What we are basically seeing is the beginning of the end of coal mining in southwestern Wyoming, which has gone on since before statehood.

We've reported on the long trend line on coal here before.

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

  

The caption to that post, if you stop in and read it (it's one of my longer ones), notes that at the time I thought I might have a future in coal.  I didn't.  A lot of other Wyomingites have seen their careers in coal depart since then, while others are hanging on.  Godby is stating something, based on his analysis that is of an historic nature.

Saying something like that tends to target he speaker. Godby didn't say the demise of coal is a good thing, he just says its happening.  And in my post above, I noted the trend line, which is over a century old now, and what that seems to indicate. That doesn't mean I'm taking glee in it either.

The Tribune article also noted the rise of wind.  I keep hearing the critics of wind say that it only has been active due to incentives passed during the Obama Administration, which will end soon. Those certainly have had a major role, but missed in that is that now wind seems viable in and of itself without help.  Pacific Power's report wouldn't have read the way it did but for that.

And so we appear on the cusp of a major change.  It's one in which Wyoming will continue to play a role, but unique in it is the fading of an entire industry.  Wyoming hasn't really seen something like that since the fading of the fur trade in the 19th Century, before Wyoming was, really.