Carbon Capture
Wyoming could lead the world toward a cleaner energy future
By Emilene Ostlind
This December, five international research teams will converge at the outskirts of Gillette, Wyoming, to compete for a $7.5 million Carbon XPRIZE.
By Emilene Ostlind
This December, five international research teams will converge at the outskirts of Gillette, Wyoming, to compete for a $7.5 million Carbon XPRIZE.
Over the last quarter century, the western states’ energy portfolio has shifted. Coal used to produce far and away the largest share of electricity, but recent advances in hydraulic fracturing and demand for low-carbon fuel have bumped natural gas to first place.
Royal Dutch Shell’s primary business is the discovery, extraction, refinement, transportation, marketing, and selling of oil.
When Congress failed to enact legislation to address climate change, President Obama vowed to take action himself. “No challenge poses a greater threat to our children, our planet, and future generations,” he said.
From verdant, low-elevation spreads in Wyoming’s northeast corner to high, dry western basins, private lands across the state are diverse.
In 2002, when Robert Hicks, owner of the Buffalo Bulletin newspaper in Buffalo, Wyoming, learned that the Johnson County commissioners canceled a conservation easement
Each spring, just outside the town of Pinedale, Wyoming, some 5,000 mule deer slip through a 400-meter-wide gap between a housing development and Fremont Lake.
In late June of 2012, the Fontenelle fire ripped across the Wyoming Range, torching forests and shrublands.
The second week of September 2013, rain pummeled Cheyenne, Wyoming.
On his ranch in Montana’s Ruby Valley, Rick Sandru can load hay and enjoy views of the snowcapped Tobacco Root Mountains as geese honk overhead.
Just south of where the Little Snake River meanders along the Colorado-Wyoming border, silvery green sagebrush and mountain scrub grow above a fortune of hydrocarbons.
As early as 2006, employees of the environmental group Western Watersheds Project allegedly trespassed onto Wyoming ranches to gather water samples.
“For somehow, against probability, some sort of indigenous, recognizable culture has been growing on Western ranches and in Western towns
During the record-setting hot and dry years of 2012 and 2013, severe water shortages on the Wind River Indian Reservation turned fields to dust and forced cattle ranchers to sell their herds.
From a distance, Kent Price looks like any other young rancher working cattle.
“They tend to die like an old cow in a draw,” Row Manuel says from the back seat.
Ken Burns’ documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea tells a story from the early years of Grand Teton National Park.
Rody Twyman follows a couple thousand bleating sheep on a dirt path.
In Texas, authorities are dealing with a rash of timber thieves sneaking onto far-flung parcels of absentee-owned lands
I grew up in the 1990s watching the hay fields between Sheridan and Big Horn, Wyoming, sprout houses. By the time I graduated from Big Horn School, golf carts zipping over manicured greens had replaced the tractors pulling balers through waist high grass.