Overview

Resources and Consumption

Missouri has substantial nuclear capacity, minimal coal and crude oil reserves, and few other major energy resources. Coal deposits are located in the northwestern Forest City basin. Missouri’s overall energy consumption is about average among the U.S. States, in line with its population. Missouri’s economy is not energy intensive, and the transportation and residential sectors lead State energy consumption.

Petroleum

Although Missouri has no refineries, several major crude oil pipelines pass through the State on their way to refining centers elsewhere in the Midwest. Missouri receives its petroleum products from several pipelines that originate in the Gulf Coast region. The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers also provide important transportation routes for petroleum products moving via barge. Missouri’s petroleum product consumption is commensurate with its population, even though the use of liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) is disproportionately high. While the majority of the State now uses oxygenated gasoline, the St. Louis metropolitan area requires reformulated motor gasoline blended with ethanol, and the Kansas City area requires the use of a gasoline specially blended to reduce emissions that contribute to ozone formation. The State has several plants that produce ethanol from corn.

Natural Gas

The residential sector accounts for nearly two-fifths of the State's natural gas consumption, with nearly three-fifths of Missouri households using natural gas as their primary energy source for home heating. The industrial and commercial sectors each account for just under one-fourth of the State's natural gas consumption.

Natural gas is supplied by several major pipelines entering the State from Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Missouri ships over 80 percent of the natural gas it receives to Illinois and Iowa on its way to other markets in the Midwest and Northeast. A new pipeline, in service as of May 2008, brings additional natural gas supply to the State: the 713-mile western leg of the Rockies Express Pipeline originates in Colorado and passes near Kansas City before terminating in the northeastern portion of the State. Missouri is one of only three States that produce synthetic natural gas.

Coal, Electricity, and Renewables

Coal is the dominant fuel for electricity production in Missouri and typically supplies more than four-fifths of the electricity market. Missouri was the first State west of the Mississippi River to produce coal commercially, but production today is minimal. The vast majority of the coal used in Missouri is brought in from other States, and over nine-tenths of this coal is transported via railcar from Wyoming. The single-reactor Callaway nuclear plant in Fulton supplies much of the State’s non-coal electricity. Approximately 3 percent of Missouri’s electricity is generated from renewable sources, and the majority of that is from hydroelectricity generation. One-fourth of Missouri households rely on electricity as their primary energy source for home heating.

In November 2008, Missouri adopted a renewable portfolio standard that requires investor-owned utilities to increase their use of renewable sources to 2 percent of total electricity generation by 2011, 5 percent by 2014, 10 percent by 2018, and 15 percent by 2021.