Nevada
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Nevada must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Nevada
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
11% of Nevada'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 Nevada's 1.0 million buildings.
In fact, 34.6% of appliances in buildings in Nevada are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 658,000 dirty buildings in Nevada. That's around 25,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 11% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
36% of Nevada'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 1.0 million vehicles in Nevada and 11,000 are already electric (1.1% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.0 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 39,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 36% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
31% of Nevada's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Nevada today.
Power Generation in the State of Nevada (2020)
But there's already 23% carbon-free electricity generation in Nevada!
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 Nevada
2 coal plants
17 gas plants
1,566 MW
1,466 MW
1,183 MW
745 MW
688 MW
665 MW
601 MW
536 MW
359 MW
230 MW
222 MW
127 MW
119 MW
96 MW
95 MW
76 MW
9 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 3,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 3,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Nevada would need to install about 1,000 turbines.
Since Nevada already has 39 MW of wind and 881 MW of solar, that's 3,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 2,000 MW of solar power. That's around 109 MW of wind power and 93 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 31% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 22% of Nevada'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