Alabama
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Alabama must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Alabama
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
3% of Alabama'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 Alabama's 2.5 million buildings.
In fact, 60.6% of appliances in buildings in Alabama are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 968,000 dirty buildings in Alabama. That's around 36,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 3% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
24% of Alabama'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 2.0 million vehicles in Alabama and 3,000 are already electric (0.1% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 2.0 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 75,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 24% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
38% of Alabama's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Alabama today.
Power Generation in the State of Alabama (2020)
But there's already 42% carbon-free electricity generation in Alabama!
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 Alabama
5 coal plants
2,842 MW
2,822 MW
2,034 MW
1,417 MW
1,265 MW
25 gas plants
2,684 MW
2,534 MW
1,826 MW
1,288 MW
939 MW
927 MW
902 MW
900 MW
823 MW
748 MW
676 MW
654 MW
317 MW
280 MW
138 MW
123 MW
121 MW
109 MW
104 MW
103 MW
99 MW
97 MW
50 MW
12 MW
3 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 7,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 8,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Alabama would need to install about 2,000 turbines.
Since Alabama already has 0 MW of wind and 58 MW of solar, that's 7,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 8,000 MW of solar power. That's around 246 MW of wind power and 298 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 38% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 34% of Alabama'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