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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Wyoming Renewables Could Push Electric Grid Upgrade

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Thursday, May 11, 2017   

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Wyoming is again at a crossroads when it comes to helping the nation meet its energy needs, according to an investigative report by the Casper Star Tribune.

Reporter Heather Richards, who interviewed state and industry leaders along with academic experts, found demand for Wyoming's renewable power supplies could help bring the electric grid across the West into the 21st century.

"What happens in California does affect places like Wyoming,” she explains. “So if California has strict rules on how much of their electricity is going to come from renewables, that changes the picture of what is on the grid – and what is being used for electricity – in a wider area than you would expect.”

Richards says the region's aging infrastructure is being called on to deliver a growing number of power sources, adding wind and solar to traditional coal and natural gas.

Updating the grid would especially help bring potentially stranded renewable assets to markets. But Richards notes currently there's not a lot of political will to push projects through in a state with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.

She says one of the biggest challenges for delivering electricity is federal red tape. She points to the TransWest transmission line, designed to carry the Chokecherry wind project's power to Nevada and California, which took 8 years to clear the permitting process – at a cost of more than $1 million – just to get started.

"Whenever you're going through permitting, it's going to take a while,” Richards states. “And that's a massive hurdle. How many developers are going to jump in when they see the price tag and the length that it takes to get something like this done?”

Richards notes Wyoming leaders want private investment, rather than state tax dollars, to lead the charge. She says ultimately the marketplace might tip the scales for building out a more robust power grid.

"So part of it is just the economics of it, right?” she says. “You always want whatever's cheapest. Coal is incredibly reliable and it's incredibly cheap. But now renewables are getting cheaper than coal, which is something that would have been crazy to even think about 10 or 15 years ago."





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