Hawaii
Back to mapTo get to zero by 2050, Hawaii must cut emissions by 3.7% a year
Emissions in Hawaii
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
3% of Hawaii'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 Hawaii's 253,000 buildings.
That means we only need to electrify the remaining 253,000 dirty buildings in Hawaii. That's around 9,000 per year.
Source: Microsoft, Mar 2021; NREL, Dec 2021Electrifying all buildings cuts 3% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Transport
51% of Hawaii'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 484,000 vehicles in Hawaii and 11,000 are already electric (2.2% of the total).
We need to electrify (or replace) the remaining 473,000 gas-powered vehicles. That's around 18,000 a year.
Source: DOT, Feb 2021Electrifying all transportation cuts 51% of the pollution.
Decarbonize Our Power
28% of Hawaii's pollution comes from burning coal, gas, and oil to make power.
That's because of how power is generated in Hawaii today.
Power Generation in the State of Hawaii (2020)
But there's already 24% carbon-free electricity generation in Hawaii!
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 Hawaii
1 coal plant
AES Hawaii
Honolulu County
203 MW
18 oil plants
Kahe
Honolulu County
610 MW
Waiau
Honolulu County
475 MW
Kalaeloa Cogen Plant
Honolulu County
299 MW
Maalaea
Maui County
230 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 324 megawatt (MW) of wind power and 445 MW of solar power.
Since the average wind turbine provides 2.75 MW of peak capacity, Hawaii would need to install about 118 turbines.
Since Hawaii already has 77 MW of wind and 205 MW of solar, that's 247 MW of wind power we need to build and 241 MW of solar power. That's around 9 MW of wind power and 9 MW of solar power a year.
Source: EIA, Apr 2022Decarbonizing all dirty power cuts 28% of the pollution.
And gives us zero-emissions power we need to eliminate pollution from buildings and cars!
Other Emissions
The last 19% of Hawaii'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