Oregon
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Oregon must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Oregon
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
10% of Oregon'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 Oregon's 1.9 million buildings.
In fact, 55.0% of appliances in buildings in Oregon are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 844,000 dirty buildings in Oregon. That's around 31,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 10% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
41% of Oregon'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 1.4 million vehicles in Oregon and 23,000 are already electric (1.6% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 1.4 million gas-powered vehicles. That's around 52,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 41% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
16% of Oregon's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Oregon today.
Power Generation in the State of Oregon (2020)
But there's already 67% carbon-free electricity generation in Oregon!
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 Oregon
1 coal plant
12 gas plants
689 MW
621 MW
611 MW
502 MW
500 MW
483 MW
296 MW
287 MW
226 MW
118 MW
11 MW
7 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, Oregon would need to install about 1,000 turbines.
Since Oregon already has 10 MW of wind and 0 MW of solar, that's 3,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 3,000 MW of solar power. That's around 127 MW of wind power and 118 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 16% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 33% of Oregon'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