Kansas
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Kansas must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Kansas
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 Kansas'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 Kansas's 1.6 million buildings.
In fact, 29.2% of appliances in buildings in Kansas are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 1.1 million dirty buildings in Kansas. That's around 43,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 6% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
18% of Kansas'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 889,000 vehicles in Kansas and 3,000 are already electric (0.4% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 886,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 34,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 18% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
21% of Kansas's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Kansas today.
Power Generation in the State of Kansas (2020)
But there's already 63% carbon-free electricity generation in Kansas!
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 Kansas
5 coal plants
2,160 MW
1,599 MW
671 MW
604 MW
349 MW
52 gas plants
904 MW
741 MW
730 MW
539 MW
408 MW
400 MW
268 MW
247 MW
149 MW
120 MW
116 MW
104 MW
88 MW
82 MW
65 MW
64 MW
63 MW
56 MW
39 MW
39 MW
38 MW
35 MW
31 MW
31 MW
28 MW
28 MW
25 MW
24 MW
22 MW
22 MW
21 MW
20 MW
19 MW
16 MW
16 MW
16 MW
15 MW
15 MW
14 MW
14 MW
13 MW
12 MW
11 MW
11 MW
10 MW
8 MW
7 MW
6 MW
5 MW
4 MW
3 MW
2 MW
29 oil plants
388 MW
29 MW
22 MW
20 MW
20 MW
20 MW
19 MW
19 MW
16 MW
13 MW
13 MW
10 MW
9 MW
9 MW
9 MW
9 MW
8 MW
7 MW
7 MW
7 MW
7 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
5 MW
5 MW
1 MW
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 3,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 3,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Kansas would need to install about 1,000 turbines.
Since Kansas already has 3,000 MW of wind and 14 MW of solar, that's 173 MW of wind power we need to build and 3,000 MW of solar power. That's around 7 MW of wind power and 122 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 21% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 54% of Kansas'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