Over 56,000 jobs and $9.1 billion in economic output. That’s what Utah stands to gain if it aggressively pursues a transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, according to a new report.

That assessment from the Sierra Club and Current Energy Group, however, runs contrary to how lawmakers are chasing their energy goals and how they feel about the state’s largest utility.

To reach those numbers, the groups examined PacifiCorp‘s biennial long-range planning document, known as the Integrated Resource Plan. One of PacifiCorp’s subsidiaries, Rocky Mountain Power, covers roughly 75% of Utah’s geography and services more than 1 million customers.

The report is “based on scenarios developed by PacifiCorp and represent different levels of renewable energy generation and therefore fossil fuel retirement,” said co-author and Current Energy Group analyst Jordan Ahern.

“Our analysis found that the portfolios with higher levels of renewable energy foster greater job and tax revenue impacts for the communities in which these projects are cited, specifically compared to the low portfolio.”

Digging into the numbers, the report finds that if Utah were to pursue a high renewables portfolio, the state’s economy would see an influx of 56,109 jobs, $337.33 million in tax revenue and $9.1 billion in economic output.

Ahern clarified that they did not take into account how much of the job creation would overlap with existing energy jobs since that would consider other policy decisions and workforce training programs. However, many of the jobs created would likely “translate one-to-one.”

“I think it’s important to remember that a lot of these jobs are things like pouring concrete, hauling transmission lines, things like that that aren’t specific to the technology themselves.”

Their methodology compared scenarios laid out in PacifiCorp’s 2023 IRP, the update to that plan published in 2024 and the 2025 draft released last December.

The original 2023 document included closure dates for two of Utah’s coal power plants, increased investments in renewables and the possibility of transitioning some facilities to nuclear power. The update that followed the next year saw PacifiCorp back off many of those commitments and reinstate the original coal closing dates of 2036 and 2042.

The 2025 draft does not contain any updated retirement dates for the company’s coal-fired power plants.

The energy crisis that Utah leaders talk about is driven by growth, demand and what they see as the retirement of “reliable baseload” — i.e. the state’s coal-fired plants that faced closure. In recent years, the Legislature passed laws to prop up the coal industry and protect coal assets, including those owned by Rocky Mountain. One of the policy architects, Rep. Carl Albrecht, told Rocky Mountain Power during a November 2024 interim committee hearing that legislators were increasingly frustrated with the company.

According to Albrecht, a former utility executive, the original 2023 IRP that included retirement dates “upset this group, it upset [the public utilities committee], it upset the public to a great extent.”

“We said, ‘No, we’ve got plenty of coal. We’ve got coal plants. We want you to stay with coal.’”

The push behind the governor’s Operation Gigawatt and other energy priorities is to meet the state’s needs sooner, rather than later — and at what they say is an affordable price. For officials like Utah Office of Energy Development Deputy Director Harry Hansen, the looming demand from AI and continued growth means Utah can’t be picky when it comes to its future energy sources.

“It’s just going to be more, more of it all, whether that’s nuclear, geothermal, natural gas, coal, solar, wind, whatever, whatever it might be, we just need more.”

Despite the rhetoric from state lawmakers, the Sierra Club stands behind its findings.

Staff attorney Rose Monahan said the club is not claiming that the grid as it stands today can run on 100% clean energy and acknowledged that “there is a space that still needs to be filled by those traditional, dispatchable resources.”

However, she is convinced that “transitioning to clean energy is not only the right choice from an environmental perspective, but it’s the right choice for Utah and Wyoming’s economies as well.”

The final version of PacifiCorp’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan is expected to be finalized later this spring.