MISSOURI

Missouri, The Show Me State (a nickname that grew out of its people’s devotion to simple common sense), is home to over six million people and covers almost 67 thousand square acres. That land can be divided into four geographic regions, each environmentally distinct. 

CLIMATE IMPACTS

Like the rest of the world, Missouri is facing a changing climate and the environmental consequences that follow. 

• Since 1970, average annual temperatures in Missouri have risen by 4 degrees (F), while annual precipitation has increased by 2.1 inches. According to a 2026 study from the University of Missouri, even small shifts in global temperature could have significant impacts across the Mississippi River Basin. 
• The state’s southeastern border is created almost entirely by the Mississippi river and, as rainstorms intensify, flooding becomes a danger. In the Midwest, the amount of rainfall during the four wettest days of the year has increased by 35%, and the amount of water flowing in most streams during the worst flood of the year has risen 20%. Flash flooding in southeast Missouri caused over $26.5 million in damage in July 2026. 
• While flooding is projected to increase in the spring, drought threatens Missouri in summer. As an agriculture dependent state, with the agricultural industry contributing over $94 billion each year, Missouri is especially vulnerable to drought. The consequences are many: droughts narrow channels needed for commercial transport, reduce crop yields, and particularly strain farms without irrigation systems. The 2012 drought caused dozens of barges to run aground Missouri’s Mississippi river shoreline and cost the region more than $275 millio From April to November 2023, Missouri faced the seventh worst drought on record since 1895. 
• The city of Colombia, Missouri is projected to experience over 50 days per year above 95 degrees (F) by 2050, and a 7% increase in rainfall, with summer droughts more common. The highest vulnerability areas for the community are heat stress, air quality, and vector-borne diseases. Meanwhile, projected impacts in the Kansas City region include decreased air and water quality, biodiversity loss, extreme weather, intensified urban heat island effect, and increased diseases including respiratory disease and heat-related illness. 

ENERGY

Missouri consumes eight times more energy than it produces, and the transportation industry accounts for almost one third of that consumption. In 2024, coal remained Missouri’s primary source of energy, fueling 57% of the state’s total electricity. Missouri burned 23 million tons of coal for electricity generation in 2024, second only to Texas, and ranked fourth in the nation for highest share of electricity net generation from coal. At the

same time, coal has been declining since its peak in 2011, when it generated 83% of electricity, and over 3100 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity has been retired since then. The state’s sole nuclear power plant contributed 15% of total electricity, while natural gas was 15% and wind was about 10%. Overall, renewables accounted for 13% of Missouri’s in-state electricity generation in 2024, with wind providing 78% of the renewable total, solar 11%, and hydropower 10%. Missouri ranks 18th in the nation for wind power, and second in the nation in biodiesel production. Missouri has seven conventional hydroelectric power plants as well as three pumped storage hydroelectric plants. While solar power remains small, it has tripled since 2017, mostly from small-scale, customer-sited rooftop solar panels. 

CLIMATE PLANS AND LEGISLATION

In 2008, Missouri voters approved the Missouri Clean Energy Act, which established a mandatory RPS with a goal of achieving a 15% proportion of renewable energy by 2021, and each year thereafter. While the state was not on track in 2019, Missouri’s largest utility Ameren did meet the goal in 2021. Compliance reports for each utility are available here. 

• Missouri’s first statewide climate plan was its priority climate action plan (PCAP) released in 2024 under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program. The Missouri Plan for Environmental Improvement Grants includes a GHG emissions inventory, priority emissions reduction measures, and a low-income/disadvantaged community benefits analysis. Missouri submitted its Comprehensive Air Quality Plan for phase 2 of the program in November 2025. 
• While Missouri did not have a statewide climate plan before this, select cities including St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia all previously released their own climate action plans. 
• The city of St. Louis released its first Climate Action and Adaptation Plan in 2017. In October 2024, St. Louis County Executive Dr. Sam Page signed the Climate Action Plan Bill, calling for the development of a plan that will set a baseline for greenhouse gas emissions and identify climate vulnerabilities across the community.
• The city of Columbia released its Climate Action & Adaptation Plan in June 2019, with Annual Reports updating its progress. The plan aims to increase resiliency in Columbia, and to reduce GHG emissions through specific targets.
• The Kansas City Regional Climate Action Plan, released in 2021, serves 2.14 million people across 10 counties and 123 municipalities. Its main target is net-zero by 2050, but it outlines almost 30 distinct goals across 9 different sectors including transportation, energy, urban greening, finance, buildings, food systems, industry, community and collaboration. Kansas City also developed its own PCAP under the EPA’s CPRG program building off its 2021 plan.
• In the 2026 Missouri legislative session, six different bills were introduced to regulate data centers, but ultimately none passed. Also unpassed were bills banning certain PFAs, a new mining permit framework, and nuclear weapons waste protections. At the same time, four bills widely opposed by both environmental groups and utilities that would have restricted or placed moratoriums on utility scale solar development in Missouri did not pass. Legal immunity legislation for Bayer, the Missouri-based company behind Roundup, failed to pass, while theS. Supreme Court sided with Monsanto, overturning an earlier Missouri circuit court ruling which directed the company to pay $1.25 million to John Durnell of St. Louis for failing to warn customers of Roundup’s potential cancer risks. 

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE 

As documented by Washington University School of Law’s groundbreaking 2019 report, Environmental Racism in St. Louis, majority Black neighborhoods in St. Louis are disproportionately burdened by environmental risks and health impacts. An updated report titled Environmental Racism St. Louis 2026 was released this year, examining how environmental harms including childhood lead poisoning, asthma, air pollution, illegal trash dumping, food apartheid, and housing disproportionately impact communities of color in St. Louis. The reports found that Black children have a 2.4 times higher rate of blood lead poisoning than white children and are 10 times more likely to visit the ER for asthma each year, Black residents are 2 times more likely to live in a food desert, and majority-Black neighborhoods have higher energy costs, contain 90% of the City’s vacant properties, and are located near the majority of the city’s industrial air pollution sources and illegal trash dumping sites. In St. Louis, where the number of days where “feels like” temperatures are above 108 degrees will triple in the next 30 years, residents in predominantly Black, historically redlined neighborhoods have high energy burdens, and face higher mortality rates during extreme heat events. The reports also outline some policies for the city to address environmental racism, including subsidizing soil testing and providing free drinking water filters for low-income households, addressing asthma disparities for those with low access to health care, requiring all power plants to install modern air pollution controls, revitalizing areas with illegal dumping issues, investing in renewable energy, and providing tax incentives for community-owned grocery stores and subsidies for healthy produce. While transformative action is necessary to address the legacy of systemic environmental racism, the report highlights how the interconnection of many of these issues means that every solution can have far-reaching effects.

For more on environmental justice across Missouri, visit this compilation by the Missouri Environmental Education Association, which includes articles on brownfield redevelopment in Wellston, Herculaneum and Springfield, lead poisoning in New Madrid County, Greene County, and Joseph, water quality issues in Hannibal and Maryville, and power plant siting in Mid-Missouri.