New Jersey
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, New Jersey must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in New Jersey
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
22% of New Jersey'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 New Jersey's 2.6 million buildings.
In fact, 18.5% of appliances in buildings in New Jersey are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 2.1 million dirty buildings in New Jersey. That's around 79,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 22% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
47% of New Jersey'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 2.5 million vehicles in New Jersey and 30,000 are already electric (1.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 2.5 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 95,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 47% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
14% of New Jersey's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in New Jersey today.
Power Generation in the State of New Jersey (2020)
But there's already 49% carbon-free electricity generation in New Jersey!
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 New Jersey
2 coal plants
50 gas plants
2,121 MW
1,426 MW
1,419 MW
1,177 MW
974 MW
821 MW
819 MW
773 MW
755 MW
735 MW
644 MW
608 MW
595 MW
575 MW
462 MW
430 MW
252 MW
237 MW
231 MW
173 MW
152 MW
140 MW
139 MW
135 MW
90 MW
84 MW
73 MW
71 MW
29 MW
25 MW
23 MW
21 MW
20 MW
12 MW
12 MW
11 MW
11 MW
11 MW
11 MW
9 MW
8 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
4 MW
4 MW
3 MW
3 MW
2 MW
2 MW
6 oil plants
113 MW
77 MW
27 MW
16 MW
8 MW
4 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 7,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 6,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, New Jersey would need to install about 3,000 turbines.
Since New Jersey already has 2 MW of wind and 481 MW of solar, that's 7,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 6,000 MW of solar power. That's around 277 MW of wind power and 227 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 14% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 17% of New Jersey'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