Mississippi's energy consumption

Summary: Mississippi has substantial energy resources, including oil and gas, although they have not been fully explored.

Mississippi is a southern US state located along the Mississippi River. Historically dependent on its natural resources and subject to recurring ecological problems such as the flooding of the river, it is the poorest state in the union. It is also infamous for lagging behind the nation in liberal reforms: it was the last to repeal the prohibition of alcohol (in 1966), and it retained segregation-era legislation, such as the poll tax and a law against interracial marriage, until the late 1980s.

Energy Resources

Mississippi does have substantial energy resources. Though its oil reserves are not as plentiful as in Louisiana or Texas, the southern half of the state does possess oil and gas fields, as well as on- and offshore oil along the Gulf Coast. Fairly recent discoveries have been made of oil deposits in the north as well, in the Black Warrior Basin, and the general feeling of geologists is that Mississippi’s oil and gas resources have yet to be fully explored.

With the decline of agriculture and the cotton industry, manufacturing is among the state’s largest industries, and per capita energy consumption is high: Mississippi is fourteenth in the country, with the industrial and transportation sectors together consuming about two-thirds of the state’s energy. The punishing heat and humidity of the summers account for greater-than-average residential and business energy consumption resulting from the use of energy-intensive air-conditioning. Most homes are heated with electricity (in contrast to the national norm), but heating is not a concern for much of the year in the state’s southern location, which explains the infrequency of gas and oil heaters.

Hattiesburg is home to a major propane supply hub, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is used in twice as many households in Mississippi as the national average. The largest refinery in Mississippi is located in Pascagoula along the Gulf Coast; it processes crude oil brought in principally from Central and South America via tanker. The Pascagoula refinery serves markets throughout the southeast via the Colonial and Plantation Pipelines, as well as other delivery methods. The Pascagoula and two smaller refineries in the state contribute about 2 percent of total American oil refining.

Mississippi produces little natural gas, approximately 0.1 percent of the national output, in part because of the significant drop in production since the start of the twenty-first century when the state’s wells began producing nonhydrocarbon gases. New wells were drilled in response, and the natural gas processing industry has expanded to accommodate natural gas brought in by pipeline from the outer continental shelf of the Gulf Coast, an area administered by the federal government. Pascagoula is home to one of the country’s largest natural gas processing plants. More than half of Mississippi’s natural gas is purchased from other states, in order to meet its consumption needs. A liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal was constructed near Pascagoula in order to begin international imports, but the subsequent rise in domestic natural gas production meant the facility went unused, and plans were enacted to turn it into an LNG export facility instead. Mississippi also has a large capacity for storing natural gas, including in salt caverns, and makes up about 4 percent of total national storage capacity.

As of the 2020s, the state had a single coal mine, in Choctaw County, supplying a 440-megawatt clean-coal mine-mouth power plant. The rest of the state’s coal power plants used coal from other states, mainly Colorado and Kentucky.

Nuclear power provided about 17 percent of the electricity in the state in 2022, all of it produced by the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station, the largest single-unit nuclear plant in the United States. The plant has a generating capacity of 1,443-megawatts.

Renewable Energy

There is little in the way of renewable energy in Mississippi, with only about 3 percent of utility-level power generation from renewables in 2022. The existing capacity is about 70 percent biomass, with one wood-firing power plant in the east, providing about 1,400 megawatts. There have been some minor movements toward sustainability and efficient energy usage, notably a plan to develop a smart grid for the University of Mississippi’s campus, a joint venture between the university and SmartSynch, a smart-grid developer based in Jackson. The university established its Office of Sustainability in 2008, and set a goal to be energy-neutral by 2050. Its programs included reusable plastic mugs, an organic campus farm, raffled-off prizes for recyclers, and the Century Park residential complex, the state’s first campus residence certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

There are significant opportunities for renewable energies, however. The state could develop its modest solar power resources and even its limited wind power potential, and its agricultural resources offer significant further potential for biomass development. A corn ethanol plant was installed in Vicksburg in 2007, and more than five biodiesel plants have been constructed for various feedstocks. With seed capital, green construction and green technologies could also be job-creating opportunities for Mississippi.

Bibliography

Fowler, Nicholas Luke. The Future of Energy in Mississippi: Policy and Politics. Dissertation. Mississippi State: Mississippi State University, 2009.

"Mississippi." US Department of Energy, 2023, www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/USEER23-MS-v2.pdf. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

"Mississippi." US Energy Information Administration, 19 Oct. 2023, www.eia.gov/state/?sid=MS. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.