GILLETTE - Preliminary results of an ongoing feasibility study suggest that Wyoming's plan to send electricity generated from coal and wind to California is very competitive with that state's other option, which is to rely on more natural gas and local renewables to meet its ever-growing energy demand.

California utility regulators banned power companies Thursday from buying electricity from high-polluting energy sources, including most out-of-state coal plants, to curb global warming.

Steve Waddington, executive director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, said low-emission coal gasification and wind power are being eyed as sources of power for the proposed Wyoming-to-California Frontier Line. Final results of the study should be available by the end of April.

"We think our wind, and the time of day it's available, is considerably higher quality than the wind resources in California," Waddington said.

Rob Hurless, energy and telecommunications advisor to Gov. Dave Freudenthal, said the consequence of California's greening energy policies is that the Golden State becomes more reliant on natural gas to meet baseload generation.

"And we're happy to sell them more gas," Hurless said.

The Wyoming-to-California Kern River pipeline already moves some 2 billion cubic feet of Wyoming natural gas per day. Hurless said that as the massive new Rockies Express natural gas pipeline flows more Wyoming gas to the eastern U.S., it will likely raise the price California pays, and that bodes well for revenues Wyoming receives from its natural gas production industry.

"Structurally, when we increase our take-away capacity, that's good for producers in the state and good for the state itself," Hurless said.

Although California has said no thanks to electricity from coal-fired power plants, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and many other Western states have not. Wyoming is in the preliminary stages of deals to send its coal by wire to the Colorado Front Range, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix, Ariz.

Each of those Wyoming coal-based projects would likely be bundled with Wyoming wind generation as well. And that, said Hurless, is the beauty of Wyoming's vast array of energy resources.

"We're happy to sell (California) our wind, we would be happy to sell them uranium. I think we still have a lot of opportunities in California, although it may not be base-load coal in the short term," Hurless said.

Although some Wyoming coal finds its way to power plants in the West, the primary market for Wyoming coal producers has been, and presumably always will be, Texas, the Midwest and points further east. But that's strictly for the primitive shovel-and-ship export of the raw coal itself. Which means most of the coal's value leaves Wyoming, too.

For the past several years, Wyoming officials have been working hard toward laying the foundation for the more "value-added" process of actually converting the coal into electricity instate for export to high-demand areas of the West.

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