By Walt Hickey Wyoming Coal plants have been folding nationwide amid the advent of cheaper natural gas, dropping prices for renewables and opposition to coal as a source of power. For Wyoming, this development is quite bad, as the state is the primary domestic supplier of coal in the United States. In an arrangement described by experts as highly irregular, the state of Wyoming, in fact, directly funds a 501(c)(4) nonprofit called the Energy Policy Network that lobbies states endeavoring to close their coal-burning power plants to keep them in service, often at enormous costs to taxpayers of those states: it cost $500 million to ratepayers in Oklahoma to keep a coal-fired plant in service in 2016, and the Energy Policy Network organized the opposition to its closure, with the end result being 2.6 million tons of Wyoming coal per year being burned by Oklahoma Gas & Electric. That it’s funded directly by Wyoming tax dollars —
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