Arkansas
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Arkansas must cut emissions by 3.7% 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 29,000 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 32,000 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.
To cut this pollution...
Put solar panels on your roof!
Then, we'll 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
White Bluff
Jefferson County
1,800 MW
Independence
Independence County
1,800 MW
Plum Point Energy Station
Mississippi County
720 MW
John W. Turk Jr. Power Plant
Hempstead County
609 MW
Flint Creek Power Plant
Benton County
558 MW
17 gas plants
Union Power Station
Union County
2,428 MW
Hot Spring Energy Facility
Hot Spring County
1,430 MW
Lake Catherine
Hot Spring County
752 MW
Magnet Cove Generating Station
Hot Spring County
746 MW
1 oil plant
Municipal Light
Clay County
7 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 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 139 MW of wind power and 157 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