GILLETTE -- If a diesel-powered haul truck at Rio Tinto Energy America's Jacobs Ranch mine in northeast Wyoming sits idle for 15 minutes or longer, the driver is required under company policy to turn off the engine.

Rio Tinto, with three large surface coal mines in Wyoming, is the only mining company in the state actively trying to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas contributing to global climate change. Globally, the international coal giant has cut CO2 emissions from its mining operations by some 9 percent since 1998, according to the company.

And it intends to go further by moving to a new fuel-efficient truck fleet at Jacobs Ranch in the next year.

At first glance, the fact that a haul truck isn't allowed to idle when not in use may seem trivial. After all, haul trucks don't remain idle for long, and each carries about 300 tons of coal per trip. Collectively, the trucks at Jacobs Ranch move about 37 million tons of sub-bituminous Powder River Basin coal each year, all of which finds its way to an aging fleet of pulverized coal-burning power plants across America's mid-section.

Alone, Jacobs Ranch's 37 million tons of coal loads approximately 67.7 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. Collectively, Wyoming's annual 400 million tons of extracted coal provides more than 17 percent of the nation's electricity and spews 880 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

On this scale, cutting wasteful idling of a diesel truck or two is mostly symbolic. But that doesn't mean it's not important.

Rio Tinto's effort is a harbinger of increasing international pressures that will likely effect great change over Wyoming's fossil-fuel-based economy in coming years -- and not necessarily in a bad way, according to some experts.

One of the outcomes of global pressures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for example, is a growing carbon trading market. With carbon trading and plenty of geology to sequester large volumes of CO2, Wyoming's coal industry could continue to enjoy a 35 percent share of the U.S. electrical generation market, or more.

In fact, by siphoning methane gas from coals that are going to be mined, Wyoming's coal-bed methane industry is already reducing the emission of a gas that is 21 times more potent than CO2 in terms of climate change, according to Evan Evans, vice president and director of engineering for the Boulder, Colo.-based Econergy International Corp.

"That could become an opportunity in Wyoming to generate new revenue streams in a carbon trading regime," Evans said.

Evans and Derek Montague, University of Wyoming associate professor of atmospheric science, will discuss climate change in the public forum series, "Energy Futures: Global Changes that Challenge Wyoming." The discussion begins at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Wold Physical Science Center on the Casper College campus in the Wheeler Auditorium.

On the fossil fuel side alone, Wyoming is certainly a player in the global energy and climate change arenas. However, Wyoming's role is continuously changing, and in a matter of three years the state could be contributing greatly to reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil by converting coal to synthetic liquid fuels for transport vehicles.

Wyoming also has a massive wind resource that could bring in revenue from a burgeoning "green tag" market in which customers voluntarily pay higher prices for electricity derived from renewable resources.

Carbon trading, along with anticipated regulation to curb greenhouse gas emissions, is expected to push Wyoming's coal customers -- electrical utilities -- away from high-emission, pulverized-coal-fired power plants and toward coal gasification. That, along with CO2 sequestration, could well sustain coal mining at more than 400 million annual tons for decades to come.

"Carbon trading is going to happen in the U.S., probably within three years, and there will be new opportunities in Wyoming to take advantage of that. The time to get started for that reality is now," Evans said.

Warmer and drier

Wyoming has more dogs in the global arena than just its fossil fuel extraction industry. Despite its "Like No Place On Earth" gateway signs, Wyoming is on Earth -- residing on a tiny .05 percent of the surface. Montague said that in terms of climate change, there's consensus in the atmospheric sciences community that the Rocky Mountain region could be in for higher average temperatures.

"Perhaps more importantly, there are indications that suggest our region might become slightly drier. And if that were to happen during summer months, that could add some impact on the agricultural community here," Montague said.

That means the 150-year-old issues of water rights and water distribution in the West won't go away any time soon. As Western states grapple with global energy pressures, they will also wrestle with many of the age-old resource debates that defined the West.

"The problem with the whole global climate change issue is it's kind of all-pervasive. It links together so many different scientific fields, the policy arena and the economic arena," said Montague. "And that's one of the challenges -- to bring together a cohesive group of individuals to work together, to focus on these various topics."

Within Bob Green's "sustainable development" title at Rio Tinto Energy America is the company's acknowledgement that global climate change and global economics are real forces that require change. "Sustainable," to be sure, is still a term that primarily refers to economics.

Under a carbon trading regime, an idling diesel engine at Jacobs Ranch doesn't just leak CO2 into the air; it leaks money. That's how Rio Tinto has justified investing some $2 million to cut CO2 emissions at its mining operations. It's also the reason it invests in cleaner coal technologies such as the U.S. Department of Energy's zero-emissions FutureGen project.

"Rio Tinto Energy America recognizes the effects of greenhouse gas emissions caused in part by human activity," Green said. "Rather than debate the proportion of the human-caused sources, RTEA prefers to strive to reduce the greenhouse gas emission rates at our operations while helping to find technological developments that will provide long-term, least-cost solutions for the broader range of emission sources."

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 682-3388 or dustin.bleizeffer@casperstartribune.net.