Virginia
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Virginia must cut emissions by 3.8% a year
Emissions in Virginia
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
10% of Virginia'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 Virginia's 3.1 million buildings.
In fact, 55.2% of appliances in buildings in Virginia are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 1.4 million dirty buildings in Virginia. That's around 52,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 10% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
39% of Virginia'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 3.1 million vehicles in Virginia and 21,000 are already electric (0.7% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 3.0 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 115,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 39% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
24% of Virginia's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Virginia today.
Power Generation in the State of Virginia (2020)
But there's already 34% carbon-free electricity generation in Virginia!
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 Virginia
6 coal plants
848 MW
668 MW
258 MW
230 MW
115 MW
101 MW
28 gas plants
2,082 MW
1,800 MW
1,773 MW
1,472 MW
1,472 MW
1,313 MW
1,011 MW
893 MW
812 MW
713 MW
709 MW
706 MW
559 MW
509 MW
408 MW
399 MW
389 MW
368 MW
300 MW
285 MW
88 MW
30 MW
24 MW
19 MW
15 MW
12 MW
8 MW
6 MW
33 oil plants
1,257 MW
812 MW
403 MW
83 MW
83 MW
27 MW
25 MW
24 MW
21 MW
15 MW
12 MW
11 MW
10 MW
7 MW
7 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
3 MW
3 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 MW
1 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 8,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 9,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Virginia would need to install about 3,000 turbines.
Since Virginia already has 6 MW of wind and 420 MW of solar, that's 8,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 8,000 MW of solar power. That's around 321 MW of wind power and 314 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 24% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 27% of Virginia'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