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Abstract
With global energy consumption increasing at about 25% per decade, it is essential for energy exporting states like Wyoming to optimize energy development during the 21st century in order to safeguard our nation’s economy and energy security. Without regulation, annual global CO2 emissions will double by 2030 (Figure 1). In this case, over a very short time period, the world’s largest economies will either have to abandon fossil fuels as a source of energy, or capture and geologically store CO2 emissions. In the future, the results from the Wyoming Carbon Underground Storage Project (WY-CUSP) will prove critical to the optimization of responsible energy resource development in Wyoming and other Rocky Mountain states. The coal extraction, enhanced oil recovery, coal-fired electricity generation, and coal-to-chemical industries will need either CO2 or a place to store CO2. To facilitate deployment of any new and/or improved energy delivery technologies and associated industries in Wyoming, the state must document the existence of available commercial CO2 storage capacity, along with infrastructure to transport CO2 from its source to the storage site, and finally to the end point of use.