With Earth Day around the corner (and internationally marked event) and with many nations being impacted by the climate emergency, a focus on environmental issues remains ever-important.
In the U.S., the country has experienced $92.9 billion in damage from weather and climate disasters during 2023. In response to this, the personal-finance website WalletHub has released a report titled 2024’s Greenest States.
The purpose is to identify the states that best protect the environment. To achieve this, WalletHub compared the 50 states in terms of 25 key metrics that speak to the current health of the environment and residents’ environmental-friendliness.
The data set ranges from green buildings per capita to the share of energy consumption from renewable resources. WalletHub determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.
The outcome was that the ‘Greenest States’ were established to be:
1. California
2. Vermont
3. New York
4. Maryland
5. Washington
6. Minnesota
7. Hawaii
8. Maine
9. Connecticut
10. Massachusetts
At the other end of the scale, the least ‘Green’ states were found to be:
41. Arkansas
42. New Mexico
43. North Dakota
44. Wyoming
45. Alaska
46. Kentucky
47. Mississippi
48. Alabama
49. Louisiana
50. West Virginia
Within the rankings there are some interesting variances. Politically, Democrat Party supporting states (‘Blue States’) are greener, with an average rank of 14.84, compared with those states that are Republican Party supporting, and hence more conservative in outlook (the ‘Red States’), which have an average rank of 36.16. (Rank 1=Greenest).
Looking at some specific green measures, South Dakota has the highest share of energy consumption from renewable sources, which is 18.3 times higher than in Delaware, the state with the lowest. Another ‘green’ measure is reliance on public transport or walking in place of the motor car. Here, New York has the highest share of people who do not drive to work, which is 3.2 times higher than in Mississippi, the state with the lowest. Connected with the automobile is fuel consumption. With this factor, Vermont has the highest number of alternative-fuel stations per 100,000 residents, which is 8.1 times higher than in Louisiana, the state with the lowest.
