Rhode Island
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Rhode Island must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Rhode Island
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
27% of Rhode Island'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 Rhode Island's 393,000 buildings.
In fact, 20.8% of appliances in buildings in Rhode Island are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 311,000 dirty buildings in Rhode Island. That's around 12,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 27% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
34% of Rhode Island'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 382,000 vehicles in Rhode Island and 2,000 are already electric (0.4% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 380,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 14,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 34% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
26% of Rhode Island's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Rhode Island today.
Power Generation in the State of Rhode Island (2020)
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 Rhode Island
9 gas plants
596 MW
545 MW
515 MW
254 MW
254 MW
69 MW
20 MW
14 MW
10 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 1,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 1,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Rhode Island would need to install about 409 turbines.
Since Rhode Island already has 0 MW of wind and 0 MW of solar, that's 1,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 1,000 MW of solar power. That's around 43 MW of wind power and 40 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 26% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 14% of Rhode Island'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