How state policymakers can use data from Princeton’s pioneering study to meet climate goals
How many electric vehicles should be on the road in each state, and across the country, in 2030, 2040 and 2050 to meet climate goals? How much land will be needed for solar or wind farms? How large will the energy-sector workforce need to be? Princeton University has released the final report of its Net-Zero America (NZA) study, which answers these questions and others about what it will take for the U.S. to transform its energy systems and set the country on a pathway to net-zero emissions by midcentury. Accompanying the release is a new digital tool that gives policymakers and other state-level stakeholders access to the data to inform local decisions.
With world leaders now convening for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, known as COP26, the newly published report and tool provide a gauge to understand how various emissions-reducing strategies are likely to affect jobs, health, land use and other factors critical to U.S. residents.
“The good news is that there is a set of actions that can be taken in the 2020s to support a net-zero pathway for the longer-term, regardless of which path to net-zero the country ultimately follows. This means that states can make big investments this decade with confidence that they will deliver value over the long term,” said Chris Greig, one of the study’s principal investigators and the Theodora D. ’78 & William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
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