Nebraska
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Nebraska must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Nebraska
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
5% of Nebraska'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 Nebraska's 1.2 million buildings.
In fact, 34.8% of appliances in buildings in Nebraska are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 774,000 dirty buildings in Nebraska. That's around 29,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 5% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
15% of Nebraska'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 625,000 vehicles in Nebraska and 2,000 are already electric (0.3% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 623,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 23,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 15% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
24% of Nebraska's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Nebraska today.
Power Generation in the State of Nebraska (2020)
But there's already 46% carbon-free electricity generation in Nebraska!
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 Nebraska
10 coal plants
1,390 MW
1,363 MW
645 MW
324 MW
229 MW
213 MW
110 MW
71 MW
8 MW
5 MW
30 gas plants
345 MW
338 MW
266 MW
247 MW
241 MW
216 MW
109 MW
57 MW
39 MW
31 MW
27 MW
26 MW
22 MW
19 MW
16 MW
14 MW
14 MW
11 MW
9 MW
9 MW
8 MW
5 MW
5 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
3 MW
3 MW
2 MW
2 MW
20 oil plants
130 MW
57 MW
57 MW
22 MW
12 MW
10 MW
7 MW
7 MW
6 MW
6 MW
5 MW
5 MW
4 MW
4 MW
4 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 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 3,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 3,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Nebraska would need to install about 963 turbines.
Since Nebraska already has 1,000 MW of wind and 9 MW of solar, that's 2,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 3,000 MW of solar power. That's around 57 MW of wind power and 97 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 55% of Nebraska'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