Utah
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Utah must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Utah
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
9% of Utah'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 Utah's 1.1 million buildings.
In fact, 20.6% of appliances in buildings in Utah are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 859,000 dirty buildings in Utah. That's around 33,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 9% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
26% of Utah'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 903,000 vehicles in Utah and 11,000 are already electric (1.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 891,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 34,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 26% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
39% of Utah's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Utah today.
Power Generation in the State of Utah (2020)
But there's already 12% carbon-free electricity generation in Utah!
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 Utah
5 coal plants
2,480 MW
1,577 MW
1,037 MW
610 MW
58 MW
21 gas plants
1,385 MW
649 MW
492 MW
217 MW
140 MW
80 MW
78 MW
44 MW
42 MW
31 MW
30 MW
22 MW
20 MW
16 MW
12 MW
10 MW
10 MW
7 MW
6 MW
5 MW
2 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 4,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 4,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Utah would need to install about 2,000 turbines.
Since Utah already has 94 MW of wind and 471 MW of solar, that's 4,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 4,000 MW of solar power. That's around 158 MW of wind power and 146 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 39% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 26% of Utah'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