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How Big is a Gigaton?

Today's Technology

Actions that Provide 1 Gt/year of CO2 Mitigation

Coal Plants

Replace 1000 conventional 500-MW plants with "zero-emission" power plants

Geologic Sequestration

Install 3700 sequestration sites the size of Norway's Sleipner Project

Nuclear

Build 500 1-GW plants

Efficiency

Deploy 1 billion cars running at 40 mpg instead of 20 mpg

Wind

Install 150× current U.S. wind generation

Solar photovoltaics

Install 10,000× current U.S. solar PV generation

Biomass fuels from plantations

Globally convert open land >15× the size of Iowa's farmland to biomass production

Storage in new forests

Reforest open land >40× the size of Iowa's farmland

Text adapted from Genomics:GTL Roadmap: Systems Biology for Energy and Environment, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, August 2005. DOE/SC-0090.