We’re just leaving 2019 behind, but Kansas energy hit a pair of milestones in 2017, based on stats released by the US Energy Information Agency.
The state has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions for 10 straight years and are now at their lowest level in four decades, according to the Kansas News Service. Kansas generated 58.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2017, the last year stats were available on this topic.
Two years ago, about half the state’s total CO2 emissions came from burning fossil fuels to create electricity for power or energy for vehicles. Energy-related emissions, especially those from coal-fired power plants, have been dropping from about 35,000 gigawatt hours in 2007 to 20,000 gigawatt hours in 2017.
As that happened, the state emphasized wind power to the point where about 36 percent of the state’s electricity now comes from wind. That includes the Waverly wind farm that started energy production in 2016 and does not include the Reading Wind Facility currently under production.
The state’s CO2 emissions peaked in 2007 at almost 80 million metric tons.
Kansas is now 31st in the country for CO2 emissions, but the Union of Concerned Scientists says the state would be among the top 60 emitters in the world if it was its own country.
