To get to zero by 2050, Hawaii must cut emissions by 4.2% a year
Emissions in Hawaii
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
3% of Hawaii'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 Hawaii's buildings.
Heating burns the most fuel in our homes, so let's start there. Of Hawaii's 501,000 homes, 93.0% already heat without burning any fuel, mostly with electricity!
That means we need to electrify the heating in the remaining 35,000 homes in Hawaii. That's around 1,000 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 3% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
49% of Hawaii'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 1.1 million vehicles in Hawaii and 35,000 are already electric (3.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.1 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 44,000 a year.
View EV Growth Trends
Electrifying all transportation cuts 49% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
34% of Hawaii's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Hawaii today.
Power Generation in the State of Hawaii (2025)
View Power Generation Trends
But there's already 32% carbon-free electricity generation in Hawaii!
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 Hawaii
1 coal plant
18 oil plants
610 MW
475 MW
299 MW
230 MW
113 MW
100 MW
97 MW
66 MW
39 MW
37 MW
34 MW
21 MW
20 MW
17 MW
12 MW
11 MW
10 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 958 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 2,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Hawaii would need to install about 349 turbines.
Since Hawaii already has 194 MW of wind and 1,000 MW of solar, that's 764 MW of wind power we need to build and 615 MW of solar power. That's around 32 MW of wind power and 26 MW of solar power a year.
View Wind and Solar Progress
Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 34% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 14% of Hawaii'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