In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, host Stu Turley sits down with Tyler Lindholm, Wyoming State Director of Americans for Prosperity, to break down the truth about America’s energy future, federal overreach, the wind farm subsidy scams, coal’s comeback, and why Wyoming is becoming the last line of defense for U.S. energy security.
Lindholm exposes how federal land policies cripple ranchers, why baseload power still matters, how California depends on Wyoming to keep the lights on, and why renewable subsidies are collapsing under their own weight. They also dive into grid reliability, the “duck curve,” production tax credit scams, and how local citizens can take back control of energy policy.
If you care about energy independence, rural America, or honest conversations outside the mainstream media… this is the episode to watch.
Thanks for your leadership, Tyler, in Agriculture, Ranching, and Energy! I had an absolute blast visiting with you. – Stu.
Connect with Tyler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-lindholm-9119a259/
???? Want to get involved?
Visit: AmericansForProsperity.org
00:00 – Intro
00:32 – Why Wyoming Is a U.S. Energy Powerhouse
01:02 – Wyoming’s Energy Priorities
01:41 – Trump’s “Three Horsemen” of Energy Dominance
02:01 – New Coal Plant Proposal
03:10 – Reliable, Affordable Energy Is King
03:35 – AFP’s Mission: Cutting Government Barriers
04:24 – Federal Land Control Hurting the West
05:44 – Grazing, Wildlife & Real Environmental Impact
07:58 – California’s Dependence on Wyoming Power
09:23 – Energy Security = National Security
10:42 – How Citizens Can Get Involved Locally
13:09 – Wyoming’s Workforce & Six-Figure Energy Jobs
13:34 – AI vs. Blue-Collar America
15:16 – The Duck Curve Explained Simply
17:03 – Wind Farm Reclamation Crisis
18:31 – Wind Subsidy Scams (PTC Loophole)
20:22 – Who Really Runs the Grid
21:55 – Closing Thoughts
Full Transcript:
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:00:07] Hello everybody. Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Podcast. My name is Stu Turley, President CEO of the Sandstone Group. I’ve got an outstanding guest today. Today we’ve got Tyler Lindholm. He is the Americans for Prosperity director up there as the state director of Wyoming. Welcome to the podcast and how are you today?
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:00:27] I’m great. Thanks for having me on, Stu. It’s a real pleasure to be here, especially coming from the Cowboys State.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:00:32] Oh, I’ll tell you, you know what? Being the cowboy state, I I I love the cowboy state. There are great oil and gas firms up there. Seymour Energy up there. Josh is one of the greatest oil and gas guys up there. Love him. And also, my cowboys at Oklahoma State have are like they are terrible. So I love talking to cowboys. And other than my cowboys at Oklahoma State. So I’m glad you’re there. What are some of your hot buttons you got working on right now?
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:01:02] Boy, we’re working on a lot. Top top shelf stuff that we’re working on though. Wyoming has always been the powerhouse of America. And so of course, energy has to be our number one priority here at Americans for Prosperity in Wyoming.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:01:15] And I’ll tell you, you know, I would have never realized that when Trump was trying to President Trump was trying to lower energy prices that he would pick up the the three horsemen of the energy dominance apocalypse. When you’ve got Chris Wright, Secretary Bergum, and then you’ve got Lee Zeldon as the three horsemen of the energy dominance. I guarantee you they’re gonna get it done.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:01:41] I think that’s right. You know, the state of Wyoming is really hustling right now. We’ve got some pretty fantastic stuff shaking out. One of the big things that we’re doing in the Cowboy state right now is we’ve got we’ve got a generation and transmission outfit based on electric power is currently doing a feed study on adding another coal-fired power plant. It’d be the first one built in the last 15 years.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:02:02] Isn’t that cool? I I you know, clean coal and and people the left leaning media hates the word clean coal. And in Wyoming, it pays a lot of bills.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:02:13] Oh yeah. I make no mistakes, Stu, without without minerals in the Cowboy state, we’re we’re Mississippi with a bad winter. I mean, that’s what we look like. That’s tough.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:02:23] But you know what’s even fun? You know what the difference between the United States and the EU is right now? And that would be the fact that we’ve got the three horsemen of the energy dominance because they have fired back up coal. I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to the king coal days of of coal, but I don’t think we need to. I think leveling out our grid and keeping the energy supply there is critical in keeping some of those plants. Now I would love to replace the older coal plants as soon as we can, but we’ve got to keep that grid stable. And the way to keep that grid stable is absolutely through not closing those coal plants.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:03:10] That’s right. That’s right. Affordability and reliability has kind of been our stance from the get-go. And ensuring that that baseload level is is reliable and on twenty-four-seven really enriches Americans’ lives. When we’re talking about humanity flourishing, humanity only ever flourishes when they have a affordable and reliable electricity. Energy is king, and and that’s why we’re so hyper focused on it.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:03:35] So for Americans for prosperity, what are you doing to help the energy stuff out there?
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:03:40] Right. So one of the biggest things that we can do is help get government out of the way. We’re working with our federal delegation. I know it’s always a problem, right? It’s a constant theme from Americans for Prosperity. Government is the problem. And we can absolutely prove it, especially in situations like this at the federal level where we’re we’re really focused on permitting reform. We’re support supporting the old Barrasso mansion, you know, come together that they did a year and a half ago, back when the Senate was a little bit more functional than it is right now. That Barrasso mansion permitting reform would be tremendous for setting energy free across the West. And so we’re really supporting that. And then on the state level, there’s always issues that we can work on and find ways to support some of these industries in in the Cowboys space.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:04:24] Now the Cowboy State is also a very good agricultural and ranch issue and it just seems like the previous administration was not so friendly to our farmers. And I I really love the farmers and I I think they’re the unsung heroes out there.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:04:44] Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the biggest issues that we saw in Wyoming and across the West, and it’s kind of a unknown for a lot of folks that don’t have don’t live in a state like this. I’m not saying Wyoming is completely different, but 52% of our state is owned by the federal government. Idaho is something like 68%. Montana is even higher. Nevada is 92% of their state is owned by the federal government. And so when you get an environmental extremist like Joe Biden in the White House, what ended up happening is they were pushing left and right to shut down a lot of our timbered area and calling it a wilderness area. When it’s a wilderness area, that means no more cowboys pushing cows through the trees. That means no more beef being raised on the land, no more sheep being raised on the land. And what ended up happening is we end up seeing a much, much more heightened fire fire situation that happens in that timber industry. And fires don’t pay. You can’t do anything with ground that’s been burned up. And you won’t see it, you won’t see it back to what it was for generations after that, which is robbing from the next generation.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:05:44] You know, people don’t understand the value of what cow poop does because cow poop, when I drive down the road, I stick my head out and there’s a cow truck going by, I smell money. And you know that that that’s counterintuitive for the city folk. But when you sit back and take a look, the cows eat the forage, they then turn around and provide more things. God really did a great job with the circle of life and a cow herd, a goat herd, a sheep herd. There are things that are fantastic things going on to the earth when they roll through.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:06:21] That’s right. That’s right. You know, and it it even goes down into the nitty-gritty of how their hoof is shaped. A cloven hoof was this country was built on the cloven hoof of a handle and deer and buffalo and elk. Those critters have been around for, you know, a lot longer than we have in a in in the United States. And that’s how our grass grows. And without those animals in those areas, the the biodiversity falls right off the cliff. And you end up with a with with a much worse, with a much worse situation for that ground. I’ll take any environmentalist to the mat on this one. It’s it’s well proven.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:06:55] That that’s you’re my kind of guy. I I like that already. Now when you sit back and take a look, where do you see what your goals for Americans for prosperity for Wyoming are going to be in twenty twenty six?
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:07:08] I think it has to start right off our top shelf items. It has to it has to start with the consumers, especially when it comes down to energy. We’ve got a regulated market across the state of Wyoming. And so we need to find a way that we can take that outdated model and shift it into a manner that does benefit consumers. One of the biggest ways we can do that is pay for what you get. It’s a simple concept where we’re essentially telling, telling these regulated utilities, you can’t charge consumers for electrons that they’ll never receive. What we see in the state of Wyoming is we’ve got a lot of different projects that are going up to ship power down to California. California doesn’t want to produce their own energy. So we ship it to them. And that’s in in a lot of cases, that’s wind turbine. And so we’re shipping them that power. The Wyoming consumer never never benefits from that, and yet they’re paying for it. And that’s not right.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:07:58] Wow. You know what’s really sad is you mentioned Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom has created a national security risk with his policies. And single-handedly this week, at the time we’re recording this, he imported in jet fuel from India, the first shipment of jet fuel, because the refineries, there was a Chevron refinery fire not too long ago that that supplied 40% of the jet fuel for California. Then you have Gavin Newsom standing up in the middle of Brazil and start talking about how he is the green representative for the United States when he’s destroyed the energy policy and he’s reaching out to Wyoming and bringing in coal-fired electricity, basically, because the the grid does not care if it’s wind or solar, but the Wyoming folks also get to pay for the wind when they’re paid to shut down wind production when they’re producing too much.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:09:04] Absolutely right. And it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s criminal. It really is. It’s and Wyoming Knights are are fed up with it and they’re looking for a solution. And so that would be my I guess my big ask for utilities. If there’s any utilities that are watching this, you can either be a hero or a loser, but either way, we’re coming to fix this for consumers across the Cowboy State.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:09:23] I like the way you say that. And I think that this is important to sit back and think. Because if President Trump’s team listens to this and anybody on the energy dominance apocalypse team, you know, the three horsemen of the energy dominance apocalypse, I guarantee it they can get it done.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:09:43] No, that’s right. That’s right. I’ve I’ve been especially impressed with Lee Zelden. So I I’m I’m pretty I’m pretty high on him.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:09:49] I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my meetings with Chris Wright over the years, and he is an absolute cool cat. I I, you know, who would have guessed that he, as a oil field guy who studied nuclear, is a nerd and and helped start a energy or a foundation for ending energy poverty, become the energy secretary. He’s a he’s a one-of-a-kind beast, and I I just applaud him for everything he’s doing there. What are some of the things that people can do? Because one of the things after visiting with Christy Anatonic and ever others over there at the Texas area, people need to get involved. How do people get involved locally? Because we cannot sit back anymore and let mainstream media dictate what goes on.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:10:42] Yeah, no, that’s a great question, Stu. And as you know, Americans for Prosperity, we’re a grassroots organization first. What that means is that we spend a lot of time at the doors. We spend a lot of time phone banking, we spend a lot of time tabling and talking to folks about what their biggest concern is. So Stu is a good example of that. One of the things that we always do when we’re at the door talking, talking to folks is the first question we always ask is when thinking about the federal or the state government, what is the biggest impact on you and your family’s life? We have this big litany, this let this list of items, right? Social issues, healthcare, on down the line. 70 to 80 percent of respondents in the Cowboy state, and this stands true across the country, are pretty much always going down the line and saying, economy, economy, and economy.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:11:31] Wow.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:11:31] So how do we how do we capitalize on that? Well, my big ask for your for your listeners right now would be to go to Americans for prosperity dot org, check out our website, find your state on the list. And if you are listening from the great state of Wyoming, you can go to CowboysforProsperity dot org and take action with us. Sign up. Let us let us take you out for coffee. We’ll never ask for money or anything like that, but we will ask for some of your time where we can work through some of these policies issues and maybe put a soapbox under you and help you stand up and find your voice.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:12:01] See, that’s huge. And I think that’s gonna get not only make America great. I’ve been saying for a long time that energy security starts at home, but energy policies start locally. And and I think that this is a gigantic thing. And I I absolutely love everything that every Americans for prosperity person I’ve met has been top of the top notch. So you’re with a fantastic organization, and I I cannot stress enough how do people get a hold of Tyler?
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:12:33] Yeah, so you can you can either hit me up at cowboysforprosperity dot org or you can shoot me an email. That’s t lindholm at AFPHQ.org. Love to hear from you. Love to be able to connect and be able to take you out for some coffee.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:12:47] Oh, that would be fantastic. I’ll tell you what, if I can get up there for some of the coal projects I’m working on, I will be taking you to coffee. And I just I love Wyoming as a state. I always love going through there and all of the great oil and gas hands up there, the coal folks. It is real America. I mean, it is what it America should be.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:13:10] It it it is, you know, I’m exceptionally biased about the Cowboys state, but it is pretty fantastic being from the powerhouse of of the United States. We’re very proud of our minerals. We’re very proud of of our roughnecks, of our folks that work out work out in the field and and and find a way to, you know, provide for their family. It it is a great living. It really is. And most of those guys that are out working on those rigs and working in coal mines, those are all six figure jobs.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:13:34] Oh yeah. You know, everybody’s kind of laughing, Tyler, that AI is gonna be taking away a lot of jobs. And as we sit back and take a look at Chevron and Exxon and all these other oil companies, a lot of mental management is leaving because of AI. But you can’t AI is not going to be digging a mine, is not gonna be hurting or birthing a cow. They are not gonna be digging in the farm. I’ll tell you, there’s still a great way to make a living out there and doing what’s in a great place. I would rather be on a horse in the middle of nowhere than in New York City listening to some fuzzy headed ferner tell me how to live my life.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:14:14] You know, what I I do think AI is probably going to disrupt California and New York and Massachusetts quite a bit, but we’ve got calluses on our hands and AI hasn’t figured out how to put calluses on its hands yet. So I think we’re all right.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:14:27] I think we’re all right. You just made my day. AI has not figured out how to put calluses on its hand yet. You know, that’s a great way to do it. Now, when maybe Elon Musk’s optimus gets rolling and he starts mass producing these things, we can worry about it. But I think we’re, you know, a long way away from that. But in the meantime, I I think that we have to take control of our own destiny as Americans. We need to stand up locally so that we do not become the EU or the UK or Canada, any of those other places that are floundering because they let the government and the left leaning politicians take control.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:15:16] Right, right. And they’re able to take control because of the terminology that they typically use on these mainstream media where they effectively confuse people. And then it it it’s easy to turn it off. And so one of the things that we do at at AFP is we’ve we found a way to kind of dig through the BS a little bit, and we can explain it in layman’s term or as I like to call it, cowboy term. So one of the things that that causes these brownouts and blackouts, and I’m sorry to say this, Stu, but Texas is one of those states where they they suffer under what’s called the duck curve. The duck, the duck curve was essentially a term that came about in 2012. It was invented in California, of course it was where there’s portable light policy. And what ends up happening is in the middle of the day, that’s when your electricity demand is at its lowest. That’s the belly of the duck. And in the mornings and the in in the evenings, that’s when your grid strain is really put in place. The rub in that situation for renewables is that’s typically the time of day where they’re not working. That means you gotta raise that baseload. You gotta raise that belly of that duck, otherwise you find you find yourself in a bad spot in the evenings. And so those those are the kind of some some of the things that we dig into pretty deeply. And what we’ve found is that this these green energy mandates that have been put in place are really are really a national security threat, as you had mentioned earlier, because it creates a situation where we’re in effect putting ourselves at the mercy of other countries that are going to run the ball, like China, that are going to do all the things they can do to get more of those databases, more of those AI centers and all all of the above, right? That’s the strategy they’re going after, all of the above. And here in the United States, we’re crippling ourselves with these with these Democrat governors and left-leaning congressmen who put these mandates on, and the only one that gets hurt is a consumer.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:17:03] You know, I’ve got about three things you just mentioned that are absolutely phenomenal points. And I apologize, Tyler, for being nice. I don’t mean to be nice, but you sit back and take a look. The connection of Wyoming selling to the grid in California is critical. What the consumers are going to be paying is even more. I believe there’s several wind farms that are in Wyoming, and those wind farms have equipment. And there’s a now solar farms in Wyoming as well. And this those wind farms and solar, they have got a real problem. We have a ballpark, and I’m gonna throw this number out about $89 billion liability for wind farms in the United States for land reclamation. As the inflation reduction act, or as Dan Bongino calls the inflation reduction act, the porculus bill, as the porculus bill starts winding down and those subsidies for those windmills start feeding out, those windmills are gonna be falling apart because they’ve been doing maintenance funny numbers under those things. And I’ve been getting in a lot of trouble for calling out for attention. So watch out, Wyoming. You’re gonna have some issues with some of your wind farms hanging out up there, and it’s going to be a problem. Land reclamation, put this as a bookmark. You’re gonna have a problem.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:18:31] Yeah, production tax credits have been a scam since they were invented. They’re horrible. In fact, I would I would challenge your your listeners right now to go to Google Earth and look up Garden City, Kansas. At the southern portion of Garden City, Kansas, there’s a huge lay down yard, ginormous of brand new wind turbines. Now, why would they just be laying them down there? Is it for quick shipment to another spot? No. As it turns out, under production tax credits, all you have to do is buy five percent of your project’s equipment, and you immediately start getting paid those production tax credits. And so you can just leave them laid down in this yard and get paid to do it. Then the scam gets worse because what ends up happening with a lot of these companies is they go to their they go to their state legislature and they say, Hey, we’re gonna be storing these here. There’s jobs, everything, it’s gonna be great, but you should give us a property tax exemption while they’re laying there. Right. And so they’re getting paid by the federal government to keep these things out of production on the ground, and then they convince their state legislature, hey, also we’re not gonna pay any taxes. It’s it’s it’s it’s cronyism. It it’s
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:19:38] At its finest. By the way.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:19:40] Yeah.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:19:40] And and what’s even sadder is the Inflation Reduction Act, the nameplate switcheroo for maintenance is starting to come around. And I can see it when I drive between my houses in Texas, the more and more are not working in Texas. And Texas has got a lot of wind. And I can see the maintenance is becoming an issue already in Texas on these things. It is not going to be pretty before too long.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:20:08] Yeah, and folks need to consider like like i if if a guy like a cattle rancher out of northeast Wyoming can find these scams, like if I can find it, guess guess how much bigger it really is. Exactly. It’s gotta be huge.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:20:22] It it is extremely huge. And now I’m in Abilene, Texas, and I can throw a rock over at the Abilene data center that’s being built. And then you sit back and take a look. It I have a hard time between all of my research and everything else, finally coming up with this thing. I’ve had whistleblowers send me stuff. I can’t print it. I can’t even give you the exact numbers of what they sent, but it’s a scam. And it is absolutely horrific on the maintenance nameplate. Texas ERCOT has got 182 nameplate gigawatt on the system. The maximum we’ve used is about a ballpark of 82 gigawatts this year in 2025. That’s a lot of extra gigawatts, as Christopher Lloyd said, and was it Back to the Future? 84 gigawatts, you know, whatever it is. That’s a lot of extra gigawatts we’ve been paying for that have been coming up and down, and then they’re being paid to stand down and everything else. The whole grid system is a scam.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:21:25] Yeah. Yeah. No, it it it it does get pretty fascinating when you dig into the different, you know, the different groups. And a lot of folks don’t even know that a lot of this is ran by the government. I mean, look at Western Area Power Administration and you know, BBA and the and the list goes on of all of these major organizations that are that’s right running these substations, transmissions transmission lines across the country. And that’s who’s controlling your power. And of course, because the federal government’s involved, of course, it’s gonna be you know, there’s gonna be some incompetency.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:21:55] You think? Well, I again I look forward to visiting with you again. Thank you for stopping by the podcast. And again, t you’re available at your LinkedIn. I’ll have that in the show notes as well. Love your cowboy hat and your picture sitting on top of the horse. I would rather ride a horse than and like I said, be out in the middle of Wyoming as opposed to being in New York City. I think I would have been a perfect actor for that pace picani sauce at New York City. Yeah, I I think New York City’s lost now, but we’ll be.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:22:29] No, it is. It is. It you know, it just real quick on that point, Stu, it a lot of these folks that are driving the Green Initiative like AOC are out of New York City, where they’re surrounded by concrete and these steel towers and all this all the things, then they’re gonna dictate to guys like us that live out in the West that I can look out into my own field and see my own cattle and timber and all of those things. Right. They’re gonna dictate to us what green should look like. Maybe you should you know, maybe AOC in that crowd should ask a cowboy because I think we probably got it figured out.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:22:58] I I would absolutely love to see AOC on a horse. I think that to me would be actually that would be better to see AOC on a horse than her faking a photo op at the fence pretending to cry and everybody backs away and you see her pretending to cry at the anyway.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:23:17] Yeah.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:23:18] Let’s get AOC on a horse. What do you think?
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:23:20] I’m in. Yeah, I I’m gonna get all of her. Let’s get her out here.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:23:23] Yeah, absolutely. I’d teach her to how to rope a cow. That would actually be great for the podcast. AOC Ropes a Cow. We’d have to have some fun on that one. Anyway, thank you. And I’ll tell you what, again, go out to Americans for Prosperity and look up the Wyoming branch. And again, thank you, Tyler, for stopping by the podcast.
Tyler Lindholm – Wyoming State Director – Americans for Prosperity [00:23:45] I super appreciate it, Stu. Thank you so much, sir.
Stuart Turley – ENB Podcast Host [00:23:47] Talk to you soon.
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