Minnesota
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Minnesota must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Minnesota
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
14% of Minnesota'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 Minnesota's 2.9 million buildings.
In fact, 24.8% of appliances in buildings in Minnesota are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 2.2 million dirty buildings in Minnesota. That's around 81,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 14% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
25% of Minnesota'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 Minnesota and 10,000 are already electric (0.6% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.8 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 68,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 25% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
21% of Minnesota's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Minnesota today.
Power Generation in the State of Minnesota (2020)
But there's already 53% carbon-free electricity generation in Minnesota!
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 Minnesota
8 coal plants
2,469 MW
1,073 MW
598 MW
138 MW
132 MW
36 MW
11 MW
8 MW
32 gas plants
1,681 MW
921 MW
825 MW
719 MW
559 MW
538 MW
468 MW
347 MW
335 MW
284 MW
284 MW
239 MW
194 MW
116 MW
116 MW
85 MW
64 MW
62 MW
51 MW
49 MW
47 MW
47 MW
45 MW
39 MW
21 MW
18 MW
15 MW
13 MW
13 MW
12 MW
7 MW
4 MW
51 oil plants
79 MW
61 MW
41 MW
25 MW
25 MW
24 MW
18 MW
16 MW
14 MW
14 MW
13 MW
13 MW
13 MW
13 MW
13 MW
12 MW
12 MW
12 MW
11 MW
11 MW
10 MW
9 MW
9 MW
9 MW
8 MW
8 MW
8 MW
8 MW
8 MW
8 MW
8 MW
8 MW
7 MW
7 MW
6 MW
6 MW
6 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
3 MW
2 MW
2 MW
1 MW
1 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 7,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 6,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Minnesota would need to install about 2,000 turbines.
Since Minnesota already has 1,000 MW of wind and 240 MW of solar, that's 5,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 6,000 MW of solar power. That's around 198 MW of wind power and 208 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 21% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 41% of Minnesota'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