South Carolina
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, South Carolina must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in South Carolina
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
5% of South Carolina'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 South Carolina's 2.3 million buildings.
In fact, 66.1% of appliances in buildings in South Carolina are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 779,000 dirty buildings in South Carolina. That's around 30,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 5% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
40% of South Carolina'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 1.8 million vehicles in South Carolina and 4,000 are already electric (0.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.8 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 67,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 40% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
33% of South Carolina's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in South Carolina today.
Power Generation in the State of South Carolina (2020)
But there's already 62% carbon-free electricity generation in South Carolina!
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 South Carolina
7 coal plants
2,390 MW
1,260 MW
772 MW
714 MW
417 MW
104 MW
99 MW
19 gas plants
1,632 MW
1,403 MW
1,046 MW
1,002 MW
985 MW
799 MW
759 MW
669 MW
294 MW
177 MW
110 MW
101 MW
84 MW
39 MW
19 MW
17 MW
10 MW
2 MW
2 MW
11 oil plants
523 MW
118 MW
112 MW
14 MW
10 MW
7 MW
6 MW
5 MW
3 MW
3 MW
3 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 5,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 5,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, South Carolina would need to install about 2,000 turbines.
Since South Carolina already has 0 MW of wind and 309 MW of solar, that's 5,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 5,000 MW of solar power. That's around 174 MW of wind power and 192 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 33% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 22% of South Carolina'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