Connecticut
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Connecticut must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Connecticut
Million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) 
equivalent (MTCO2e ) emissions
Note: Grey area indicates missing data due to processing delays.
Source: WRI, Mar 2021
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
28% of Connecticut'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 Connecticut's 1.2 million buildings.
In fact, 27.4% of appliances in buildings in Connecticut are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 882,000 dirty buildings in Connecticut. That's around 34,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 28% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
38% of Connecticut'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 1.2 million vehicles in Connecticut and 9,000 are already electric (0.7% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.2 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 46,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 38% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
19% of Connecticut's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Connecticut today.
Power Generation in the State of Connecticut (2020)
But there's already 42% carbon-free electricity generation in Connecticut!
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 Connecticut
44 gas plants
1,158 MW
1,097 MW
842 MW
840 MW
693 MW
578 MW
520 MW
430 MW
350 MW
107 MW
96 MW
71 MW
71 MW
43 MW
36 MW
26 MW
26 MW
17 MW
16 MW
15 MW
12 MW
9 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
3 MW
3 MW
3 MW
3 MW
3 MW
2 MW
2 MW
1 MW
1 MW
1 MW
1 MW
1 MW
20 oil plants
642 MW
495 MW
242 MW
167 MW
139 MW
115 MW
22 MW
22 MW
22 MW
19 MW
10 MW
10 MW
6 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
3 MW
2 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 4,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 4,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Connecticut would need to install about 1,000 turbines.
Since Connecticut already has 1 MW of wind and 131 MW of solar, that's 4,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 3,000 MW of solar power. That's around 144 MW of wind power and 134 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 19% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 15% of Connecticut'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