To address these issues, the researchers examined 36 major electric utility pledges stretching across dozens of subsidiaries and operating territories in 43 states.
"We found that about a seventh of the pledged emission reductions were redundant – utilities would have made those cuts anyway under existing state requirements," Galik says. "However, that means there's still significant potential to go above and beyond what utilities would be required to do. This is particularly important in those parts of the country where there are no existing renewable energy production or GHG reduction requirements on the books."
Altogether, if utilities actually meet their pledged goals, the power sector's emissions could go down more than 30% by 2050, compared to 2018 levels.
"The biggest variable here will be whether utilities actually meet their pledged goals," Galik says. "But because climate change is such a pressing concern, it's still important to understand the potential impact of these pledges, particularly to inform future policy decisions at the federal level. In other words, if you want to develop policies to really move the needle, you need to know where things may already be headed."
The paper, "Major U.S. Electric Utility Climate Pledges Have the Potential to Collectively Reduce Power Sector Emissions by One-Third," will be published Dec. 17 in the journal One Earth. First author of the paper is Diana Godlevskaya, a recent graduate of NC State. The paper was co-authored by Noah Kaufman of Columbia University.