Maine
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Maine must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Maine
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
29% of Maine'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 Maine's 759,000 buildings.
In fact, 23% of appliances in buildings in Maine are already fossil fuel free!
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 583,000 dirty buildings in Maine. That's around 22,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 29% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
44% of Maine'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 356,000 vehicles in Maine and 2,000 are already electric (0.5% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 354,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 13,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 44% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
6% of Maine's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
To cut this pollution...
Put solar panels on your roof!
Then, we'll replace all fossil fuel power plants with solar and wind farms.
...and find good jobs for those workers.
Current Fossil Fuel Power Plants in Maine
6 gas plants
Westbrook Energy Center
Cumberland County
564 MW
Maine Independence Station
Penobscot County
550 MW
Bucksport Generation LLC
Hancock County
298 MW
Rumford Power
Oxford County
275 MW
Androscoggin Energy
Franklin County
164 MW
Eastern Maine Medical Center
Penobscot County
4 MW
3 oil plants
William F Wyman
Cumberland County
863 MW
Cape Gas Turbine
Cumberland County
35 MW
Robbins Lumber
Waldo County
13 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 1,000 megawatt (MW) [?] of wind power and 1,000 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Maine would need to install about 538 turbines.
Since Maine already has 291 MW of wind and 36 MW of solar, that's 1,000 MW of wind power we need to build and 1,000 MW of solar power. That's around 44 MW of wind power and 43 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 6% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 21% of Maine'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