Ohio
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Ohio must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Ohio
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
13% of Ohio'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 Ohio's 5.5 million buildings.
In fact, 26.8% of appliances in buildings in Ohio are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 4.1 million dirty buildings in Ohio. That's around 150,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 13% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
25% of Ohio'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 4.2 million vehicles in Ohio and 15,000 are already electric (0.3% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 4.2 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 157,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 25% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
30% of Ohio's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Ohio today.
Power Generation in the State of Ohio (2020)
But there's already 17% carbon-free electricity generation in Ohio!
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 Ohio
15 coal plants
2,600 MW
2,468 MW
2,175 MW
1,880 MW
1,444 MW
1,426 MW
1,087 MW
873 MW
85 MW
67 MW
67 MW
56 MW
54 MW
21 MW
8 MW
39 gas plants
1,430 MW
1,062 MW
978 MW
962 MW
922 MW
832 MW
796 MW
740 MW
715 MW
692 MW
681 MW
678 MW
594 MW
572 MW
564 MW
544 MW
450 MW
447 MW
236 MW
159 MW
127 MW
93 MW
50 MW
50 MW
50 MW
47 MW
39 MW
32 MW
32 MW
32 MW
26 MW
22 MW
13 MW
13 MW
12 MW
8 MW
5 MW
4 MW
1 MW
36 oil plants
1,289 MW
665 MW
556 MW
293 MW
81 MW
42 MW
19 MW
16 MW
14 MW
14 MW
11 MW
11 MW
11 MW
11 MW
9 MW
8 MW
6 MW
6 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
5 MW
4 MW
4 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 MW
2 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 13,000 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 13,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Ohio would need to install about 5,000 turbines.
Since Ohio already has 296 MW of wind and 107 MW of solar, that's 13,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 13,000 MW of solar power. That's around 483 MW of wind power and 485 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 30% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 32% of Ohio'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