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The Trump administration has issued a number of executive and secretarial orders aimed at making renewable energy development more difficult on both public and private lands. At the same time, the administration and Congress have also advanced policies that subsidize fossil fuel development in the form of reduced royalty rates and other fees. Those efforts are beginning to impact the economies of Western states that rely on energy production, both renewable and fossil.
In Wyoming, a major coal-producing state, a report by state financial forecasters predicts that thanks to the budget bill pushed by the Trump administration and passed in July, which reduced the coal royalty rate from 12.5 percent to 7 percent, Wyoming will lose as much as $50 million in annual revenue that would have come from the state's share of those royalties. "It's going to be left up to the state of Wyoming to fill in the gaps, and that's something they don't talk about," said state senator Mike Gierau. "We're going to get left holding the bag and the bill."
Meanwhile, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum expressing concerns about the effects the Interior department's policies are having on solar energy development, an important part of the state's economy. "[M]y office is hearing that solar projects deep in the project pipeline have been frozen," Lombardo writes in the letter, adding, "Solar energy development on federal land fuels Nevada's economy."
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Across the nuclear supply chain we're seeing permits getting expedited and we're having concerns around safety, environmental quality, and public trust.”
