California’s ambitious 2022 mandate to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 stands as a beacon of climate action, but the path forward demands urgent and comprehensive efforts across multiple sectors of the economy. A recent study conducted by researchers from Stanford University unveils a detailed and rigorous roadmap that outlines the technological, economic, and policy transformations necessary to realize this ambitious goal. This paradigm-shifting study incorporates advanced computational modeling to simulate potential futures for California’s energy and emissions landscape, offering critical insights into how the state can systematically dismantle its carbon footprint.
The study’s integrated model employs extensive data sets from federal and state agencies alongside prior research, creating a forward-looking blueprint projecting California’s energy generation, storage needs, emissions reductions, and associated economic costs under various decarbonization scenarios. Central to the projections is the expected necessity to more than double the state’s current power generation capacity—from 80 gigawatts to an estimated 170 gigawatts—alongside nearly 54 gigawatts of energy storage infrastructure by mid-century. This expansion is essential as the state transitions its transportation, industrial, and residential sectors to rely substantially on electrification and low-carbon electricity sources, even when factoring in expected improvements in energy efficiency.
The researchers categorize required technologies into three tiers, reflecting their differing levels of commercial maturity and technological readiness. The immediate half of the emissions reduction can be achieved through the broad deployment of commercially available technologies. These include widespread adoption of renewable electricity—solar and wind power—battery storage systems, electric passenger vehicles, and bioenergy-derived methane produced through anaerobic digestion from organic waste streams. Although these technologies are fundamentally ready for scale, their implementation faces non-technical hurdles such as protracted permitting processes, grid interconnection bottlenecks, federal regulatory dynamics, and supply chain constraints. Addressing these administrative challenges is critical to accelerating deployment at the scale necessary.
Beyond what has already been demonstrated at commercial scale, the study emphasizes that an additional quarter of California’s emissions reduction will require the maturation and cost reduction of near-commercial, early-stage technologies. This includes the electrification of heavy-duty transportation—trucks and buses—and the use of zero-carbon fuels such as green hydrogen for industrial heat and manufacturing processes. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) emerges as a key technology in this category, critical for sectors that are notoriously difficult to decarbonize, like oil refining and cement production. The model illustrates that permitting a controlled share of natural gas power plants to operate with CCS could reduce the spatial footprint and economic cost of renewable development by serving as reliable, firm power sources.
The final approximately 23% of emissions reductions hinge upon breakthrough research-phase technologies still under development. Among these are advanced modes of decarbonizing long-distance transportation including trains, aviation, and maritime vessels, all of which pose formidable challenges in terms of energy density, payload capacity, and fuel availability. Innovations in climate-friendly refrigerants, intended to replace conventional substances that have extraordinarily high global warming potentials, are also necessary to curb indirect emissions from cooling systems. Moreover, direct carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, including both bioenergy with CCS and direct air capture, are projected to be indispensable for offsetting residual emissions and ensuring net-zero status, necessitating the sequestration of tens of millions of tons of CO2 annually.
The projected scale of CDR deployment underscores the pivotal role it must play in California’s climate strategy. While bioenergy combined with CCS recycles biogenic CO2 emissions through industrial processes, direct air capture represents a highly challenging, energy-intensive approach that extracts CO2 from the atmosphere and sequesters it underground, offering a critical lever to compensate for emissions that are hard to eliminate through other means. Currently, these methods are costly and require significant technological innovation to reach economic feasibility at the scale envisaged by the study.
The study also illustrates the interconnected nature of energy transition and policy frameworks. It advocates for extensive reforms to streamline permitting procedures for new generation projects, storage solutions, and transmission infrastructure expansion—challenges that currently hinder rapid deployment. Notably, the research suggests incentivizing CCS integration at existing natural gas-fired power facilities by potentially recognizing them under the state’s renewable portfolio standards, illustrating a pragmatic approach to leveraging transitional energy technologies to reduce costs.
Importantly, the researchers highlight the importance of maintaining stringent regulatory mandates already in place, such as California’s zero-emission vehicle sales requirement by 2035. Extending similar policies to building systems and appliances could anchor demand for clean energy solutions. The promotion of renewable natural gas and renewable diesel, derived from biological feedstocks and chemically identical to their fossil-based counterparts, also figures as an essential component for decarbonizing sectors with limited electrification potential, despite the global limitation in supply of such biofuels.
Achieving California’s net-zero emissions target by 2045 is portrayed less as an economic or technological cost hurdle and more as a challenge of deployment speed and political resolve. The study underscores that overcoming financial, regulatory, logistical, and social barriers is paramount to rapidly scaling these technologies, which will require unprecedented coordination and commitment across governments, industry, and civil society. The study authors, including Sally Benson, a prominent figure in sustainable energy research and former White House strategist for energy transition, stress that assembling this ecosystem of innovation, infrastructure, and policy action will be crucial for California to fulfill its climate ambitions.
Though commercially mature technologies can halve emissions, and observable progress in early-stage solutions provides optimism, the remaining quarter reliant on nascent innovations will test technological frontiers in energy and industrial systems. Simultaneously, California must address the political economy of energy transition, balancing stakeholder interests while fostering regulatory environments conducive to innovation and rapid carbon reductions. Without decisive policy action to lower administrative barriers and support emerging technologies, the risk of falling short of the 2045 mandate will increase despite the availability of necessary technological pathways.
In summary, California’s journey to net-zero by 2045 delineated in this comprehensive Stanford study vividly paints a future requiring not just state-of-the-art technology but also systemic overhaul and policy ingenuity. The projected infrastructure build-out involves doubling generation capacity, deploying massive storage, electrifying transportation and industrial sectors, integrating CCS, and ultimately using carbon dioxide removal at scale. This multifaceted approach underscores the urgent necessity of holistic strategies combining technological innovation, regulatory agility, and public-private collaboration to turn one of the most ambitious climate policies into a replicable success story for states and nations worldwide.
Subject of Research: Not applicable
Article Title: What will it take to get to net-zero emissions in California?
News Publication Date: 26-Sep-2025
Web References: 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114848
Image Credits: Courtesy Sarah Saltzer; Javier Flores; David Neutel
Keywords: Climate change mitigation, Technology, Energy policy, Greenhouse gases, Renewable energy, Carbon sequestration, Carbon capture
