To get to zero by 2050, Colorado must cut emissions by 4.2% a year
Emissions in Colorado
Million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) 
equivalent (MTCO2e ) emissions
Note: Grey area indicates missing data due to processing delays.
Source: EPA, Aug 2024
This is how we're going to do it
- Boilers and furnaces with heat pumps
- Gas stoves with electric induction stoves
- No-till farming to keep CO2 in the soil
- Capturing methane leaks from landfills
- Capturing CO2 to make emissions-free concrete
- Burning green hydrogen to make emissions-free steel
- Plugging methane leaks from gas pipelines
Decarbonize Our Buildings
11% of Colorado's climate pollution comes from buildings.
We burn fossil fuels to heat our air, water, and food.
To cut this pollution...
Let's electrify our heat!
We'll replace...
...in all of Colorado's buildings.
Heating burns the most fuel in our homes, so let's start there. Of Colorado's 2.5 million homes, 25.5% already heat without burning any fuel, mostly with electricity!
That means we need to electrify the heating in the remaining 1.8 million homes in Colorado. That's around 78,000 per year.
View Home Heating Trends
This counts each home's main heating source. Stoves, water heaters, and businesses aren't included yet.
Source: Census American Community Survey, Oct 2026Electrifying all buildings cuts 11% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
26% of Colorado's pollution comes from cars, trucks, trains, and planes.
But mostly from cars.
To cut this pollution,
your next car must be electric.
Or consider going car-free with public transit, bikes/e-bikes, car share, or other alternatives!
There are 5.6 million vehicles in Colorado and 163,000 are already electric (2.9% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 5.4 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 228,000 a year.
View EV Growth Trends
Electrifying all transportation cuts 26% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
24% of Colorado's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Colorado today.
Power Generation in the State of Colorado (2025)
View Power Generation Trends
But there's already 45% carbon-free electricity generation in Colorado!
To clean up the emissions from the polluting power plants we need to replace all fossil fuel power plants with solar and wind farms.
...and find good jobs for those workers.
Current Fossil Fuel Power Plants in Colorado
9 coal plants
1,635 MW
1,428 MW
800 MW
552 MW
465 MW
283 MW
257 MW
114 MW
3 MW
26 gas plants
1,427 MW
1,149 MW
685 MW
554 MW
540 MW
420 MW
398 MW
397 MW
300 MW
297 MW
251 MW
228 MW
194 MW
154 MW
154 MW
118 MW
114 MW
101 MW
84 MW
61 MW
53 MW
35 MW
33 MW
27 MW
13 MW
10 MW
6 oil plants
129 MW
31 MW
19 MW
12 MW
10 MW
6 MW
But wait!
It's not enough to replace our power plants with wind and solar farms.
To power our electric cars and buildings, we need two times the electricity we have today.
In all, we'll need to build 20,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 25,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Colorado would need to install about 7,000 turbines.
Since Colorado already has 6,000 MW of wind and 4,000 MW of solar, that's 14,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 22,000 MW of solar power. That's around 589 MW of wind power and 904 MW of solar power a year.
View Wind and Solar Progress
Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 24% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 39% of Colorado's climate pollution comes from other sources...
This includes farming, landfills, industry, and leaks from gas pipelines.
There's no one solution to solve these problems, but there are lots of great ideas:
That doesn't mean there's no solution, it just means that clean electrification doesn't help with these problems, and you could fill a whole book with covering all of them. We need to encourage our politicians to invest in researching new solutions and implementing existing solutions to these problems!
Ready to do your part?
Learn how to electrify your own machines and pass local policy to electrify the rest
Take Action