To get to zero by 2050, Rhode Island must cut emissions by 4.2% 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: EPA, Aug 2024
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
26% 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 buildings.
Heating burns the most fuel in our homes, so let's start there. Of Rhode Island's 450,000 homes, 14.4% already heat without burning any fuel, mostly with electricity!
That means we need to electrify the heating in the remaining 386,000 homes in Rhode Island. That's around 16,000 per year.
View Home Heating Trends
This counts each home's main heating source. Stoves, water heaters, and businesses aren't included yet.
Source: Census American Community Survey, Oct 2026Electrifying all buildings cuts 26% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
35% 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 807,000 vehicles in Rhode Island and 10,000 are already electric (1.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 797,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 33,000 a year.
View EV Growth Trends
Electrifying all transportation cuts 35% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
25% 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 (2025)
View Power Generation Trends
But there's already 13% carbon-free electricity generation in Rhode Island!
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 3,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 4,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Rhode Island would need to install about 1,000 turbines.
Since Rhode Island already has 62 MW of wind and 508 MW of solar, that's 3,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 4,000 MW of solar power. That's around 136 MW of wind power and 157 MW of solar power a year.
View Wind and Solar Progress
Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 25% 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