Kentucky
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Kentucky must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Kentucky
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
4% of Kentucky'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 Kentucky's 2.4 million buildings.
In fact, 50.8% of appliances in buildings in Kentucky are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 1.2 million dirty buildings in Kentucky. That's around 46,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 4% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
24% of Kentucky'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 1.6 million vehicles in Kentucky and 3,000 are already electric (0.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.6 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 62,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 24% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
44% of Kentucky's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Kentucky today.
Power Generation in the State of Kentucky (2020)
But there's already 8% carbon-free electricity generation in Kentucky!
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 Kentucky
13 coal plants
3,718 MW
2,594 MW
2,226 MW
1,750 MW
1,748 MW
1,717 MW
1,609 MW
772 MW
586 MW
509 MW
445 MW
405 MW
344 MW
11 gas plants
1,663 MW
1,468 MW
1,150 MW
1,097 MW
688 MW
624 MW
227 MW
120 MW
62 MW
27 MW
18 MW
1 oil plant
Source: EPA, Jan 2021
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 6,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 7,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Kentucky would need to install about 2,000 turbines.
Since Kentucky already has 0 MW of wind and 12 MW of solar, that's 6,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 7,000 MW of solar power. That's around 236 MW of wind power and 267 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 44% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 28% of Kentucky'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