Indiana
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Indiana must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Indiana
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
6% of Indiana'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 Indiana's 3.4 million buildings.
In fact, 31.5% of appliances in buildings in Indiana are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 2.3 million dirty buildings in Indiana. That's around 88,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 6% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
18% of Indiana'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 2.1 million vehicles in Indiana and 7,000 are already electric (0.3% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 2.1 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 80,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 18% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
37% of Indiana's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Indiana today.
Power Generation in the State of Indiana (2020)
But there's already 8% carbon-free electricity generation in Indiana!
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 Indiana
14 coal plants
3,340 MW
2,600 MW
2,201 MW
2,155 MW
1,304 MW
1,185 MW
1,080 MW
949 MW
823 MW
707 MW
680 MW
600 MW
415 MW
94 MW
29 gas plants
2,186 MW
1,232 MW
1,178 MW
1,128 MW
1,040 MW
692 MW
577 MW
500 MW
472 MW
402 MW
340 MW
305 MW
283 MW
242 MW
182 MW
176 MW
169 MW
114 MW
83 MW
61 MW
43 MW
40 MW
29 MW
25 MW
23 MW
7 MW
3 MW
2 MW
1 MW
2 oil plants
Source: EPA, Jan 2021But 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 9,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 10,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Indiana would need to install about 3,000 turbines.
Since Indiana already has 902 MW of wind and 101 MW of solar, that's 8,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 10,000 MW of solar power. That's around 324 MW of wind power and 378 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 37% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 38% of Indiana'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