Wyoming Environmental Groups Debate Best Way to Manage Data Center Growth in the State

CODY, Wyo.—On a warm October evening at a bar in downtown Cody, Wyomingites gathered to ponder the future of what some hope will be the Cowboy State’s next booming industry: data centers.

This summer, outgoing Gov. Mark Gordon signed an executive order titled “Data Centers the Wyoming Way” that he said would “guide responsible development in Wyoming,” while keeping the state an attractive landing spot for the enormous server warehouses that power the AI industry.

Data centers’ potential impacts on Wyoming’s precious water supply, already-rising electricity prices and prized public lands have rankled many corners of the state. Gordon acknowledged those concerns in a statement accompanying the release of the order, which is not binding.

Environmental groups in Wyoming agree that there need to be more guardrails on data center development, but they are not fully aligned on how to achieve that goal. 

Wyoming’s chapter of The Sierra Club believes a moratorium on data centers could be useful in certain circumstances, but the group has not taken a position on the utility of halting development across the state. The Wyoming Outdoor Council sees a tangible opportunity to advance new data center policies with the incoming crop of legislators and a new director of the Department of Environmental Quality. But a moratorium, in their view, would not guarantee those guardrails and is therefore a risky way to spend environmental groups’ limited political capital.

“By its very nature, a moratorium is temporary, and a call for a moratorium on data centers would really be a stopgap,” Jocelyn Wulf, the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s data center campaign manager, told a few dozen Cody residents this month at the data center town hall the organization hosted.

Representatives from both organizations told Inside Climate News they believe the incoming crop of legislators has an appetite for changing how Wyoming manages data center construction.

Not everyone in Cody sounded convinced that data centers would be a net positive for Wyoming.

“What’s the benefit?” asked Anne Trosper, a lifelong Wyomingite who has worked in the oil and gas, and conservation industries. “Where does Wyoming get money out of this thing?”

Data centers pay property taxes and electricity sales taxes in Wyoming, in addition to hosting construction jobs in the building phase of the facilities, and employing a small number of permanent workers once they are up and running.

But data centers could provide tax revenue to Wyoming in another familiar if indirect way. 

With data centers demanding enormous amounts of power—Google’s Project Tembo, formerly known as Project Jade, could use up 10 gigawatts of electricity, more than five times Wyoming’s statewide electricity consumption—many companies are choosing to meet that demand in Wyoming with fossil fuels.

Much of Wyoming’s tax base comes from royalties paid by the coal, oil and gas industries, and the state has championed the Trump administration’s support for fossil fuels.

To fuel the industry’s growth, some Wyoming counties are zoning parcels of land as industrial parks, exempting data center companies from obtaining permits under Wyoming’s Industrial Siting Act. The Wyoming Outdoor Council describes this arrangement as a “loophole” companies use to build quicker and skirt some public oversight.

“That means no comprehensive review process by state agencies,” Wulf told the Cody gathering, so communities wouldn’t receive the impact assistance payments associated with some projects that go through that process. “This is not to say that they are still not subject to state and federal laws, but we are losing out on that review process as a whole [because] local governments must then review these projects to the best of their abilities. Despite their best intentions, local governments do have more limited capacity for thorough review.”

Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital, has spent years courting data center development with mixed success. While the new construction has created many temporary and some permanent jobs, the scale, size and impacts of the new projects have not been without controversy.

In 2025, WyoFile reported that Microsoft applied for an air permit to run 128 backup diesel generators for a data center complex south of the city. 

This July, the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities found that a contractor working on a data center project for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, accidentally introduced a rare bacteria into the city’s wastewater treatment system. That incident occurred after Cheyenne city council members voted against a proposed 12-month moratorium on data center development this May.

“Guardrails are the direction that we should be going in,” Emma Jones, an associate organizer at the Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club, told Inside Climate News. “A lot of community members want to see groups advocating for moratoriums because [data center development] is moving too fast.”

But calling for a moratorium would be unwise without a plan for what to accomplish during the pause, she said. As a result, the Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club hasn’t publicly supported or opposed a moratorium. “We don’t want to just push for a moratorium for the sake of having a moratorium,” she said.

Some at the Cody meeting agreed with the Wyoming Outdoor Council that the new lawmakers could be open to taking a firmer approach to regulating AI growth. “It’s just a huge responsibility,” Trosper said. 

When asked whether a moratorium would be helpful given the compressed nature of Wyoming’s upcoming legislative session, which starts in January and lasts only a few weeks, Trosper said she was unsure.

“I’m undecided at this point,” she said.

Moratorium or no, Trosper feels Wyoming will have its hands full with data centers, and lawmakers at all levels of government in the state need to be able to contribute to manage the booming industry. “The state needs to actively promote ways for local lawmakers to understand how [the industry] works,” she said.