< Why a town on the front line of America's energy transition isn't letting go of coal

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The green energy transition is underway in the United States as the country is closing its coal-fired power plants in favor of more climate-friendly sources of energy - or at least that's one narrative. Another is that demand for electricity in America is surging, and it's too soon to write off coal. This push and pull, especially in an election year, is leading to uncertainty in one Wyoming coal town, where a new, more climate-friendly nuclear power plant has been promised. NPR's Kirk Siegler sent this report.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: A few weeks before Christmas last year, Cliff Green, a mechanic at the Black Butte Coal mine in southern Wyoming, got the dreaded pink slip after four years of steady work.

CLIFF GREEN: They laid us off the morning, Monday morning, after they let us work our night shift, they laid us off. So that was fun (laughter).

SIEGLER: Green is 47 with a dry sense of humor. In a black Carhartt hoodie, his big hands are swollen from years of hard work. Those mine layoffs got a lot of attention. Especially from the outside, it looked like just the latest signal that Wyoming, built on fossil fuels, is ill-prepared for the reality that coal is going away. Green's not so sure it is, though.

GREEN: I foresee that coal's going to come right back around. That's just what I think. But maybe I'm foolish.

SIEGLER: Coal jobs also tend to pay a lot more, at least right now, than work in the solar or wind industry, he says. And anyway, most of those are just initial construction jobs.

GREEN: They think they can change something that doesn't really need to be changed as far as I'm concerned. If it's been this way for a hundred years, why would we change it now?

SIEGLER: This is a pretty common sentiment in Wyoming, the nation's top coal producing state. Republican Mark Gordon is the governor.

MARK GORDON: Currently, the country seems to think that if we take coal off the power grid that somehow we're going to do great things for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

SIEGLER: The U.S. has already reduced carbon dioxide emissions from coal by more than half in the last 20 years. But the governor says coal can be cleaner and its CO2 emissions buried underground.

GORDON: You know, here's the frustrating thing about the climate discussion. People are saying, I don't know a coal miner. We can retrain them. They're going to be better off if we retrain them. And it's somebody else's problem.

SIEGLER: It's true. Efforts to transition workers from coal to new jobs and lower carbon energy haven't really taken off. But in Gordon's home state, in a little town in the isolated, frozen southwest corner, that actually could soon change.

BILL THEK: And you can see how deep that snow is. Right there that's, what, 6, 8 feet deep?

SIEGLER: Bill Thek is the mayor of Kemmerer, a boom and bust town built on coal.

THEK: I think that our agenda isn't to muddy up the planet by any stretch of the imagination, it's to make a living.

SIEGLER: Kemmerer may be on the cusp of yet another boom now that TerraPower, the energy company owned by billionaire Bill Gates, has chosen it to build its first nuclear power plant. The pitch is it should supplement jobs that will soon be lost when the legacy coal power plant here is decommissioned next year.

THEK: I don't believe a lot of the green crap that's being told to people. But don't get me wrong, I know that we need to move along in the energy industry and create things like the nuclear power plant.

SIEGLER: And there's already new money showing up in town in anticipation of the nuclear plant, a big deal for a place where just a few years ago, it felt like the bottom was about to fall out. Now there are at least two large new housing developments planned, a new truck stop and hotel.

THEK: So that's in the works. This Fossil Fuel Coffee Company, that used to be a florist shop.

SIEGLER: It's across from a statue of J.C. Penney, who started his chain of stores here in Kemmerer in 1902.

THEK: It sits here for our J.C. Penney picnic during the summer.

SIEGLER: When Bill Gates came to town last year, national headlines portrayed Kemmerer as a dying coal town now getting a new lease on life thanks to America's energy transition. But back in his pickup, mayor Thek's eyes are rolling a little at that. He's worried about the hundred or more coal plant workers who are about to lose their jobs, likely years before the new nuclear plant opens.

THEK: What do you do with these people that you transition away from, you know, just axe it, shut it off? What do you do with these people? Who supports them? Who supports their families, these green people? No.

SIEGLER: TerraPower, the Gates company, is planning to break ground on testing sites and a new workforce training facility in Kemmerer later this spring. CEO Chris Levesque says there's a qualified labor pool right here at the coal plant, and they're committed to retraining and hiring as many workers as possible.

CHRIS LEVESQUE: That in no way is a burden for us. That, in fact, is an opportunity for us because, you know, if you look at how you make electricity in an advanced reactor, it's not that different from how you make electricity in a coal plant.

SIEGLER: But people in Wyoming have heard promises from energy companies before, and they don't always pan out. The local coal mine that supplies the coal plant, which just a few years ago was bankrupt, now says it's planning to expand and dig for more coal. Grumpies is a mainstay bar popular with local coal miners. It's still OK to smoke in here. Owner Teri Picerno says there's a lot of speculation, if not confusion, in town right now.

TERI PICERNO: You know, you have people that work at the coal mine and they're being told that they're looking for more markets, they're going to expand. But then you have people working at the power plant saying, we're just going to get rid of the coal and go to the nuclear.

SIEGLER: Over by the pool tables, there are huge Trump banners. One says, F your feelings. No state voted more for Trump percentage wise in 2020 than Wyoming.

PICERNO: I don't think anybody's going to do a lot until they know the outcome of the November election.

SIEGLER: So there's still a lot of limbo right now, except maybe with Cliff Green, the heavy equipment mechanic who lost his job at that coal mine before Christmas.

GREEN: I wasn't real worried. I mean, I'll do about anything if I have to. I mean, the only people that aren't working are the ones that don't want to.

SIEGLER: He just got off his shift at his new job. He was recruited not by the nuclear plant, but by the expanding Kemmerer coal mine. Green's getting in his pickup. His weekend is finally starting.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR OPENING)

SIEGLER: A cold sixer of Coors he just bought is in the back seat. He tells me he can't afford to wait or be retrained for nuclear. He's hoping he can ride out coal until he retires.

What do you think about, like, people who say, like, well, we got to shut down all coal, you know? You're well aware of this, right?

GREEN: Oh, yeah.

SIEGLER: I think I probably know what you think about this (laugher).

GREEN: I think they got their head up their [expletive].

SIEGLER: Where's all the electricity to power all the new electric cars going to come from right now, he asks.

Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Kemmerer, Wyo.

(SOUNDBITE OF SAM GENDEL AND FABIANO DO NASCIMENTO'S "FOI BOTO")

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