CHEYENNE - The rejection of a federal permit for a proposed Utah coal-fired power plant over carbon dioxide emissions should not effect a coal mining industry in Wyoming that supplies many such power plants around the nation, a state mining industry representative said Friday.

"We're not selling to plants that aren't constructed, so the utilities that are taking Wyoming coal are going to plants that are operating," Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, said Friday.

An Environmental Protection Agency appeals panel on Thursday rejected a federal permit for the proposed Bonanza power plant in Utah.

The panel said the EPA's Denver office failed to adequately support its decision to issue a permit for the plant without requiring controls on carbon dioxide, the leading pollutant linked to global warming.

This is "an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting process," the panel said.

Wyoming supplies about 40 percent of the nation's coal, most of which is used to generate electricity.

Environmentalists and lawyers representing industry groups said the ruling puts in question permits of some planned coal-burning plants around the nation. The EPA is not considering any permits for planned plants in Wyoming.

But as long as power plants currently in operation are still using coal, the decision shouldn't affect Wyoming, Loomis said.

"If Congress and the new administration develop new rules that would impact the ability of those plants to continue to operate, then that would obviously have an impact on Wyoming coal, but I think that's quite a ways down the road," he said.

Nevertheless, Loomis was perplexed by the EPA panel's decision.

"Nobody has ever declared CO2 a pollutant," he said. "There are no rules or regulations on controls. So how are you going to mandate that somebody take action on something that they have no idea what kind of action to take?"

Loomis noted there are specific emission limits and standards placed on other pollutants emitted by coal-fired plants.

"It just seems unreasonable to me to expect somebody to comply with something that there isn't even a regulation on," he said.