Reno County among slow growing counties in Kansas, economist says
Posted Jan 09, 2020 5:13 PM
By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — An economist with the Sandlian Center for Entrepreneurial Government says new statistics from the federal government show that economic growth is not what some would hope it could be in Kansas largest counties.
"It has measured economic output of all 3000 counties in the country," economist Michael Austin said. "While we kind of have an idea of which Kansas counties push the entire state forward, nationally, even Kansas' largest counties rank among the slowest growing counties in the country."
Reno County is one of the relatively slow growing counties.
"When we looked at its economy, which is its gross domestic product, its growth from 2017 to 2018 ranked it in the 37th percentile in the nation," Austin said.
That means nearly two-thirds of counties grew more than Reno County in that year.
Government sector growth in the same period was in the 42nd percentile, as Reno County government actually shrank 0.4% from 2017 to 2018.
"We've never had an economic snapshot at this level, at this county level, ever," Austin said. "The federal government has stated that with this information out, they hope to get updates out every year."
The best county in Kansas for economic growth was Sherman County. It grew 25.4% from 2017 to 2018.
Kansas’ decline is largely due to the rapid adoption of wind energy
and a slow move away from coal powered electricity. That is to say:
Kansas produces less carbon dioxide, or CO2, the powerful greenhouse gas
that’s released into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels and is a
major driver of climate change.
While
it’s below the national average, on a global scale: “Kansas, if it were
its own country, would be one of the top 60 CO2 emitters,” said Joe
Daniel, an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
So, when Kansas sees a reduction in emissions like it has in the past decade, it matters, he said.
The decline began in 2007, when total CO2 emissions in Kansas peaked at nearly 80 million metric tons.
First,
it’s helpful to know the source of Kansas’ CO2 emissions. In 2017,
about half of total CO2 emissions came from burning fossil fuels, such
as coal and natural gas, to create electricity. The rest was mostly from
burning gasoline and diesel in our cars and trucks.
The recent
reductions aren’t transportation-related, because, despite more
efficient and cleaner burning engines, additional people and cars have
offset the difference. In fact, total transportation emissions in Kansas
have barely changed in the past 40 years.
That leaves electric power generation.
The decline of coal
As the graph shows, energy-related CO2 emissions began to plummet in
the mid-2000s. Specifically, it’s emissions from coal-fired power
plants.
While some of the reductions are likely due to plant
upgrades and federal environmental regulations that forced coal plants
to clean up what was coming out of their smoke stacks, it’s mostly
because plants burned less coal.
Coal plants in Kansas only produced about 20,000 gigawatt hours of
electricity in 2018, compared to an average of about 35,000 gigawatt
hours during the 2000s.
Daniel said the decline is largely due to
economics. With the fast growth of cheap wind-generated electricity in
Kansas, it’s become less profitable to run coal plants.
“I don’t
think a month has gone by where I haven’t read a study about the poor
economics of either coal plants, or coal mines, or the companies that
invest in those properties,” Daniel said.
The rise of wind
About 36% of all electricity produced in Kansas is from wind, the highest percentage of any U.S. state.
Twenty years ago, there was no such thing.
Part
of the rapid growth of the industry is obvious: You wouldn’t put a wind
turbine in a place with no wind, and there’s a lot of wind in Kansas.
Plus, federal and state tax incentives encouraged developers to jump into the market.
And it’s increasingly cheaper to build a wind farm.
Just this year, Kansas saw four new wind farms come online, adding enough capacity to power 190,000 homes for a year.
“Will
we see four wind projects come online every year for the next five
years? No,” said Kimberly Gencur-Svaty, director of public policy at the
Kansas Power Alliance. “But I do think we’ll probably continue at a
pace of where we’ve averaged the last 20 years, which is a project or
two.”
How low can it go?
Ashok Gupta with
the Natural Resources Defence Council said the move to renewable energy
and subsequent decrease in CO2 emissions will be vital to reducing the
impacts of climate change.
But, he wondered if it will be fast enough, especially in states that have a lot of wind.”
“We should be going by 2030 to pretty much carbon-free electricity,” he said.
While
some states like Colorado have begun to adopt 100% renewable energy
goals, Kansas has not. Even if Kansas were to get to 100% renewable
energy, there’s still the nearly 20 million metric tons of
transportation emissions to worry about.
Achieving a clean
electrical grid will also be key to reducing those emissions, Gupta
said, even if it also means another, different shift in the way things
are currently done.
“We have to start making sure that our
transportation and our buildings are moving to all electric,” he said.
“That’s the strategy for the next 10 years.”
Editor's note:
This story was corrected on Dec. 30 to show the coal plants produced
gigawatt hours of electricity, not megawatt, and that there are 20
million metric tons of transportation emissions, not 20 metric tons.
Brian
Grimmett reports on the environment, energy and natural resources for
KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on
Twitter @briangrimmett
or email him at [email protected] The Kansas News Service
is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains
Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and
their connection to public policy.
