Georgia
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Georgia must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Georgia
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
8% of Georgia'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 Georgia's 4.0 million buildings.
In fact, 51.5% of appliances in buildings in Georgia are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 1.9 million dirty buildings in Georgia. That's around 71,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 8% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
37% of Georgia'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 3.5 million vehicles in Georgia and 24,000 are already electric (0.7% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 3.5 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 128,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 37% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
34% of Georgia's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Georgia today.
Power Generation in the State of Georgia (2020)
But there's already 37% carbon-free electricity generation in Georgia!
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 Georgia
5 coal plants
3,564 MW
3,540 MW
1,957 MW
988 MW
953 MW
27 gas plants
3,447 MW
1,487 MW
1,377 MW
1,239 MW
1,192 MW
1,099 MW
919 MW
796 MW
726 MW
701 MW
692 MW
597 MW
594 MW
570 MW
540 MW
495 MW
494 MW
409 MW
386 MW
360 MW
323 MW
242 MW
242 MW
184 MW
100 MW
18 MW
12 MW
11 oil plants
704 MW
318 MW
140 MW
80 MW
47 MW
30 MW
13 MW
11 MW
4 MW
3 MW
2 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 10,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 12,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Georgia would need to install about 4,000 turbines.
Since Georgia already has 0 MW of wind and 591 MW of solar, that's 10,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 11,000 MW of solar power. That's around 368 MW of wind power and 405 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 34% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 21% of Georgia'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