WY Withdrawing Approvals for Two Wind Projects

There were a couple of approved leases for wind farm projects in Wyoming that it seemed only the developers and the state land commissioners wanted. Everyone else who would be impacted by them had pretty much lined up against them in united opposition.

The interesting thing about these planned wind turbines, though, is something I hadn’t run across yet. Both projects – Pronghorn H2 and Sidewinder – weren’t going to be constructed to provide electricity to the grid, but as part of a manufacturing scheme for ‘green’ hydrogen. Both developments are owned by a Colorado-based company called ‘Focus Clean Energy.’

…It is a fair question to ask. After all, both the Pronghorn and Sidewinder projects are promoted by Focus Clean Energy, a Colorado-based company pursuing a large-scale green hydrogen initiative in east-central Wyoming. The Sidewinder Clean Hydrogen Center is particularly pertinent to Niobrara County. The project is being spearheaded by Paul Martin, president of Intermountain Wind, LLC. in Boulder, Colorado. According to Martin, the “clean hydrogen” produced by the Sidewinder project will be used to make synthetic fuels that can supplement fuels that are already on the market.    

After a 4-1 state land commissioner vote approving the leases last June, the Pronghorn project raised the ire of a local rancher who lives adjacent to the property. 

Mike Stephens filed a lawsuit alleging that the commissioners didn’t follow their own rules when issuing the 45-year approval for something where, he says, no one really has any clear idea about the technology yet.

Man – does that ever sound familiar.

On Monday afternoon, Mike Stephens was out moving cattle on his family’s ranch with the sweeping views of the Laramie Mountains stretching across the horizon. 

That view and concerns Stephens has with the way the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners approved a lease for the Pronghorn H2 wind project, led Stephens to take legal action against the board. 

“It’s right in my backyard. I border it,” said Stephens, describing an area outside Glenrock that his family first homesteaded in 1912. “It’s beautiful. It’s like our Tetons and our Bighorn Mountains.” 

Nobody wants windmills blocking those views, so why should Converse County residents sacrifice their scenic and bucolic vistas? 

That’s a question that keeps coming up, said Stephens, who believes the Board of Land Commissioners didn’t follow proper procedures when it approved by a vote of 4-1 a lease covering approximately 13,838 acres of state land in Converse County. 

The lease was granted for the Pronghorn Clean Hydrogen Center, a 302.5-megawatt wind project that would span roughly 46,000 acres total when including private lands. The project is being developed by Pronghorn H2, LLC, a subsidiary of Acciona & Nordex Green Hydrogen. It plans to use wind and solar power to produce “green” hydrogen jet fuel. 

Stephens worries the technology is unproven and the lease is 45 years, leaving open the possibility that the project could fold, leaving the state of Wyoming in a tough spot. 

“That’s what I worry about. The state would be stuck with it all,” Stephens told Cowboy State Daily while on a break from moving cattle. “Wind farms sell out. And this is a hydrogen thing, and nobody even knows anything about that.”

Lo and behold, at the beginning of December, a district judge agreed with him, pointing out precisely where the state land commissioners had by-passed a kind of important requirement in their own regulations – that wind farms on state leases must provide electricity back to the grid.

His judgment for Mike Davis vacated the Pronghorn lease and overturned the land commissioners’ approval.

A Converse County district judge has sided with a local rancher and reversed the State Board of Land Commissioners’ approval of a wind energy lease for the potential $1.7 billion Pronghorn H2 project, ruling Friday that the project doesn’t meet the state’s own definition of wind energy leasing because it won’t connect to the electrical grid.

…The lawsuit centered on a core legal question: whether a wind project that doesn’t feed electricity into the traditional power grid qualifies for a wind energy lease on state trust lands.

The board’s rules define “Wind Energy Leasing” as leasing of state land for the exclusive right to convert wind energy into electrical energy “including collecting and transmitting the electrical energy so converted to the substation from which the electricity will be transmitted from the wind energy development to the interconnection of the transmission grid.”

The Pronghorn H2 project doesn’t plan to do that. Rather than selling electricity to the grid, it would use wind-generated power to produce “green” hydrogen jet fuel through electrolysis. That distinction, Stephens’ attorney Patrick Lewallen argued, meant the project didn’t qualify under the state’s wind energy leasing rules.

You’ve got to follow the rules.

Things have gotten so heated over the issue last month that it nearly came to blows at a special meeting of the state land board when the lone nay vote from last June, WY Secretary of State Chuck Gray, got into a tense mouth-off with WY Governor Mark Gordon, who had been one of the four ‘yeas.’

The residents of Niobrara County, the county around the still-approved Sidewinder project, were becoming increasingly opposed for a number of legitimate reasons to having it dropped in their laps.

…Yet, several Niobrara County residents are not fully convinced. The opposition’s project-related concerns include light pollution, infrasound exposure, potential disfiguration of the landscape, noise pollution, and, most significantly, water usage. Numbered among these objectors is Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who recently engaged in a rather heated exchanged with Governor Mark Gordon during a special meeting of the state land board in Douglas on Jan. 8, 2026. At an especially tense juncture of the exchange, Gov. Gordon asked Gray, “Do you want to step outside?”

In the three weeks since the fractious commission meeting, there seems to have been a change of heart among a majority of the board members.

Wyoming state board votes to cancel wind leases in two counties since people are learning how useless and environmentally destructive they are: https://t.co/2hG3b1385j

— BeeLady🐝 (@miamivandynyu) February 10, 2026

Two former ‘yea’ votes have publicly apologized for their approval votes in June, and Secretary Gray has begun the procedural paperwork to withdraw lease approvals for both projects.

Despite Pronghorn officials saying the company would file a lawsuit if Wyoming withdrew the previously approved state leases for Pronghorn and Sidewinder wind farms, the Board of Land Commissioners did just that Feb. 5.

Wyoming Auditor Kristi Racines, Secretary of State Chuck Gray and Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder voted to begin the process of canceling state land leases 1620 and 1625 with the Pronghorn Project wind farm in Converse County and the Sidewinder wind farm in Niobrara County.

Additionally, Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz was asked to withdraw the appeal he’d made earlier to the Wyoming Supreme Court to throw out 8th Judicial District Converse County Judge Scott Peasley’s decision nixing the Pronghorn wind lease, due to what Peasley called the SBLC not “following their own rules.”

Gray made the motion to cancel the lease projects; however, State Treasurer Curt Meier and Gov. Mark Gordon were the two dissenting votes during the board’s monthly meeting in Cheyenne.

The governor and state treasurer are sticking with the wind developer.

Naturally, all of this is under threat of a lawsuit from clean green energy folks. 

…Pronghorn attorney Jeff Pope said, “If the board were to vote to rescind, Pronghorn has asked me to explain what we would do to protect those interests … I don’t intend to make threats, but just simply explain, as I’ve explained to the Attorney General’s Office, what we are prepared to do. Should the board vote today (to cancel the state land trust leases) we will be filing a lawsuit today and also seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction.

“Likewise, we’ll be filing a petition for review to begin the formal appellate procedure for the board’s vote.”

However, when reached for comment Feb. 6, Focus Clean Energy President and Pronghorn’s lead project manager Paul Martin was less direct.

Martin said while a motion was made to take steps that affect Pronghorn’s state lands leases, “those leases are still currently in place for Sidewinder and Pronghorn, and we are moving forward with the intention of pursuing these projects as before. Should we decide to file a lawsuit or otherwise take action, we will share an update.”

Thank goodness for the judge in this case, who used common sense and the commission’s disregard for its own rules to prevent the despoiling of yet another wilderness area by as-yet unproven technology.

…”They’re not hooking that to the grid,” Stephens said. “So I don’t know what the story is. What’s going to happen over there?”

The Board could appeal the decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court or seek other legal remedies.

In explaining why the grid connection requirement matters, Judge Peasley pointed to the public reaction when the Board approved the lease in April.

“There is no great need to speculate or conjecture why the use of windmills on state lands requires the converted energy be transmitted to a substation,” Peasley wrote. “Indeed, this requirement in the ‘definition’ section of the Board’s wind energy leasing chapter impacts the entirety of the rules relative to wind energy, including the potential impact to surrounding areas.

“Not surprisingly, many of the complaints lodged at the public meeting stemmed from surprise that a wind energy lease could be permitted in such a remote area.”

And good on the locals who fought it.

More please.

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