Arkansas
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Arkansas must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Arkansas
Million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) 
equivalent (MTCO2e ) emissions
Note: Grey area indicates missing data due to processing delays.
Source: WRI, Mar 2021
This is how we're going to do it
- Boilers and furnaces with heat pumps
- Gas stoves with electric induction stoves
- No-till farming to keep CO2 in the soil
- Capturing methane leaks from landfills
- Capturing CO2 to make emissions-free concrete
- Burning green hydrogen to make emissions-free steel
- Plugging methane leaks from gas pipelines
Decarbonize Our Buildings
6% of Arkansas's climate pollution comes from buildings.
We burn fossil fuels to heat our air, water, and food.
To cut this pollution...
Let's electrify our heat!
We'll replace...
...in all of Arkansas's 1.6 million buildings.
In fact, 49.9% of appliances in buildings in Arkansas are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 787,000 dirty buildings in Arkansas. That's around 30,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 6% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
21% of Arkansas's pollution comes from cars, trucks, trains, and planes.
But mostly from cars.
To cut this pollution,
your next car must be electric.
Or consider going car-free with public transit, bikes/e-bikes, car share, or other alternatives!
There are 872,000 vehicles in Arkansas and 1,000 are already electric (0.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 871,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 33,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 21% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
37% of Arkansas's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Arkansas today.
Power Generation in the State of Arkansas (2020)
But there's already 37% carbon-free electricity generation in Arkansas!
To clean up the emissions from the polluting power plants we need to replace all fossil fuel power plants with solar and wind farms.
...and find good jobs for those workers.
Current Fossil Fuel Power Plants in Arkansas
5 coal plants
1,800 MW
1,800 MW
720 MW
609 MW
558 MW
17 gas plants
2,428 MW
1,430 MW
752 MW
746 MW
679 MW
600 MW
349 MW
236 MW
224 MW
185 MW
155 MW
136 MW
120 MW
66 MW
19 MW
14 MW
6 MW
1 oil plant
Source: EPA, Jan 2021
But wait!
It's not enough to replace our power plants with wind and solar farms.
To power our electric cars and buildings, we need two times the electricity we have today.
In all, we'll need to build 4,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 4,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Arkansas would need to install about 1,000 turbines.
Since Arkansas already has 0 MW of wind and 68 MW of solar, that's 4,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 4,000 MW of solar power. That's around 144 MW of wind power and 163 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 37% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 36% of Arkansas's climate pollution comes from other sources...
This includes farming, landfills, industry, and leaks from gas pipelines.
There's no one solution to solve these problems, but there are lots of great ideas:
That doesn't mean there's no solution, it just means that clean electrification doesn't help with these problems, and you could fill a whole book with covering all of them. We need to encourage our politicians to invest in researching new solutions and implementing existing solutions to these problems!
Ready to do your part?
Learn how to electrify your own machines and pass local policy to electrify the rest
Take Action