Wyoming Clean Energy Guide

Wyoming is coal country that quietly became one of America's most important wind states — not by policy, but by physics. The state has no renewable portfolio standard, is the only state in the nation that taxes wind generation, and still sends roughly 60% of the power it makes out of state. Yet wind now supplies about 27% of in-state generation, and a data-center gold rush around Cheyenne could rewrite the whole equation.

No Mandate, a Wind Tax, and a Coal Backbone

Wyoming's clean-energy story is unusual because there is no policy pushing it. The state has no renewable portfolio standard and no clean energy standard — the Western Interstate Energy Board lists Wyoming's RPS targets as "none." Everything built here was built on resource quality and out-of-state demand: developers chase Wyoming's world-class wind to serve California, Nevada and other Western RPS markets, then export the electrons. Coal, meanwhile, still supplies roughly 58% of in-state generation, and Wyoming remains the nation's top coal-producing state and a major net electricity exporter.

Wyoming is also the only state in the country that levies an excise tax on wind generation: $1.00 per megawatt-hour produced, administered by the Wyoming Excise Tax Division. Under current law the tax kicks in three years after a turbine first spins, a de facto exemption for the first three operating years. There is a persistent legislative appetite to raise it — HB0252 in the 2025 General Session would have repealed that three-year exemption (projected to raise roughly $460K in FY2026 rising to about $4.15M by FY2028) — but it "did not consider for introduction" and stalled, as similar efforts have.

Net Metering and Incentives

Wyoming enacted statewide net metering in 2001. It covers investor-owned utilities, rural electric cooperatives and irrigation districts (municipal utilities are excluded), letting customers with solar, wind, biomass or hydro offset usage on systems up to 25 kW. Beyond that, the state offers few clean-energy tax incentives — and taxes wind — so federal ITC and PTC remain the primary project economics. That makes Wyoming acutely exposed to national policy: as OBBBA phases down the federal tax credits, projects here lose their main financial lever with no state backstop to soften the blow.

The Fleet: Carbon and Converse County Wind

Wyoming's operating clean fleet — 4,959 MW of wind, solar and storage per American Clean Power, ranking 22nd nationally and overwhelmingly wind — is concentrated in a handful of large complexes in Carbon, Converse and Laramie counties. The pipeline is dominated by one enormous project that has been under construction for the better part of a decade.

• Chokecherry and Sierra Madre (Carbon County): The headline project, up to roughly 3,000-3,550 MW planned, developed by Power Company of Wyoming LLC (backed by Philip Anschutz). Under construction since 2016-2017 at roughly $5 billion, with its completion deadline extended to June 1, 2029; the first 1,500 MW is contracted to deliver to Nevada by June 2029 via the now-permitted TransWest Express transmission line. When finished it would be among the largest onshore wind farms in North America.
• Cedar Springs Wind (Converse County): Wyoming's largest operating wind complex, roughly 533 MW across Phases I-III (192 turbines, online since December 2020) plus a roughly 393 MW Phase IV (about $595M, completing around 2025). Owned by NextEra Energy Resources and PacifiCorp/Rocky Mountain Power.
• TB Flats I & II (Carbon County, near Medicine Bow): Roughly 301 MW (sources vary; Mortenson cites 503 MW for the combined build), built for Rocky Mountain Power/PacifiCorp under the Energy Vision 2020 program and online in 2021.
• Ekola Flats (Carbon County): About 251 MW (63 turbines), another Energy Vision 2020 PacifiCorp project, operating since 2020.
• Roundhouse Renewable Energy (Laramie County): Roughly 227 MW of wind, PacifiCorp-owned, operating since 2020.
• South Cheyenne Solar (Laramie County): 150 MW, one of Wyoming's largest solar installations, online in 2024 — a reminder that solar is still only about 1% of state generation.

Siting Runs Through the State — and Increasingly the Counties

Utility-scale wind and solar in Wyoming are permitted at the state level by the Wyoming Industrial Siting Council, part of the Department of Environmental Quality, under the Wyoming Industrial Development Information and Siting Act (W.S. 35-12). The Council's jurisdiction attaches to wind projects with 20 or more towers (across all phases) and to solar projects rated 30 MW or greater — or causing 100+ acres of surface disturbance. Once an application is filed, the Council has a statutory 165-day window to approve or deny it, with public notice, filing at the local library, notification of affected landowners and mineral-rights owners, and review by roughly 19 state agencies.

The twist is that counties now hold real leverage too. Under 2024-era statutes — W.S. 18-5-502 (county regulation of wind and solar) and W.S. 18-5-509 (county referral to the Industrial Siting Council) — counties can adopt their own wind and solar rules and refer projects up to the state. Several counties have been tightening setbacks and permitting amid rising opposition. There is no confirmed uniform statewide numeric setback; that fight is playing out county by county, which is exactly where developers now get caught. For the running list of active flashpoints, see our Wyoming opposition tracker.

Political Crosswinds: Moratorium Fights and a Vacated Lease

Organized opposition to wind — and, to a lesser extent, solar — has grown sharply in 2024-2026, driven by landscape and land-use concerns and by political defense of coal, oil and gas. The most visible test came in the 2025 General Session: SF0183, a bill to impose a roughly five-year moratorium (to 2030) on new large wind and solar projects, sponsored by Sens. Larry Hicks, Cale Case and Cheri Steinmetz, failed in the Senate Corporations Committee on February 3, 2025 after strong public and industry pushback. The statewide ban died, but the county-level fights did not.

The sharpest example is Converse County, where the 267-turbine Pronghorn H2 project (Focus Clean Energy, on state trust lands along the northern Laramie Range) drew heavy local opposition. On December 5, 2025, a Converse County District Court judge vacated the state wind lease; the Wyoming Attorney General appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court, and a related "Sidewinder" project is also contested. In neighboring Laramie County, packed commission meetings have featured testimony citing "more than 200 miles of proposed wind turbines" from Cheyenne to Douglas and more than 4,000 approved turbine permits across 3,000+ square miles. Statewide officials, including Secretary of State Chuck Gray, have publicly opposed new wind leasing on state lands — a clear signal of political headwinds even as the industry keeps building.

The Data-Center Surge That Could Eat the Surplus

The single biggest force reshaping Wyoming's grid is not a wind project — it is an unprecedented data-center and AI buildout around Cheyenne and in the southwest that could double statewide electricity demand. Wyoming currently uses only about 40% of its roughly 10,200 MW of generating capacity in-state and exports the rest; the proposed loads would swallow that surplus whole.

• Project Jade (Crusoe + Tallgrass): A joint-venture computational campus south of Cheyenne in Laramie County requiring roughly 1,800 MW initially, with plans to hyperscale toward about 10,000 MW — roughly equal to Wyoming's entire existing generation capacity.
• Prometheus Hyperscale: Partnering to add about 1,200 MW of data-center load in southwest Wyoming.
• Microsoft and Meta: Microsoft announced in April 2026 its intent to buy roughly 3,200 acres to expand data-center operations in Cheyenne (where it has operated since 2012), while Meta is developing a roughly 945-acre campus outside the city. Cheyenne already hosts about 13 large data centers.

The math is stark: a Wyoming Energy Authority working group is drafting regulatory recommendations for the Legislature as data-center inquiries arrive weekly. For a state whose clean-energy buildout has always been justified as an export product for other states' RPS markets, a homegrown load this large changes the calculus — suddenly Wyoming has its own reason to want every megawatt it can generate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Outlook: A Coal State That Suddenly Needs Its Own Wind

Wyoming has spent a decade building world-class wind essentially for other states — no mandate at home, a tax on the turbines, and coal still holding 58% of the grid. That posture is colliding with two forces at once. On one side, rising rural and political opposition, from the failed SF0183 moratorium to the vacated Pronghorn H2 lease, is making siting harder county by county. On the other, a data-center surge that could double demand is turning Wyoming's exported surplus into something the state may need for itself.

The near-term bet is that Chokecherry and Sierra Madre finishes toward its 2029 deadline and TransWest Express finally moves Wyoming wind west at scale — even as the loss of federal ITC/PTC support under OBBBA removes the main economic lever, with no state incentive to replace it. If the hyperscalers land the loads they are proposing, the honest reframe is that Wyoming's clean-energy question stops being "how much can we export" and becomes "can we build fast enough to power what's moving in" — all while the county commissions and the courts decide where a turbine is allowed to stand.