Tech
Lord, I’ve Eaten So Many Meal Kits. These Are the Best Ones
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Meal Prep Kits Worth It?
If you’re talking raw materials by the pound—meat, zucchini, rice, noodles—meal kits will of course cost more than buying food at grocery stores. It’s a service, after all, with added value above simple ingredient cost. Unless you’ve got quite expensive taste, you’ll easily be able to make meals at home for less than the $7 to $14 a serving that a meal kit will cost. But this said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that meal kits are expensive for what they offer. I conducted an experiment, trying to re-create four different meal-kit meals by going to my local grocery store—buying every ingredient provided by the meal kit. Turns out, if you don’t have the right sauces and spices at home already, it’s very difficult to recreate these meals at grocery stores for less than they cost from a meal kit, in part because you’ll most likely have to buy full containers of sauces and spice instead of pre-portioned ingredients,
So, is HelloFresh worth it compared to a grocery store? Caveats are in order: For staple ingredients and spices you’ll use on multiple recipes, the grocery store is of course cheaper. Once you buy a container of paprika for an individual recipe, it’ll also be there for future recipes, whereas meal-kit spices are portioned for the meal. So the real answer is that meal kits can be a quite economical way of trying out a new recipe, or a new style of cooking, without larding up your fridge with condiments you won’t use again. For ingredients you’d use less commonly, a meal kit can reduce waste and spoilage, and maybe even compete on price for an individual meal.
If your comparison point is takeout, well, the best meal delivery services on this list will almost certainly be cheaper and more nutritious. I’ve found that a meal kit in the fridge tends to be a good motivator to cook a nutritive meal—and thus can save me both the money and the cholesterol.
To really save on cost, some people like to keep testing out the trial offers and discounts. Much like mattress-in-a-box companies, meal-kit companies usually have a running promotion. Usually this takes the form of a trial discount price that’ll drop your cost by half or more on the first box, in hopes you’ll like the service enough to keep it on at full price.
For me, a meal kit a few times a week ends up balancing out well: It’s a motivating factor to eat better, and it means that when I do go to the grocery store, I can do so less mindlessly and more purposefully, since I’ve always got a few meals’ worth of ingredients in the fridge. It’s also had the side effect of broadening my culinary toolkit, keeping me from getting stuck in the same ruts.
That said, you know: It’s a set grocery expense and not necessarily a small one. I do get tired of tossing or recycling cold packs and boxes. And depending on time of year, I often prefer shopping in person for what’s seasonal and local, when produce is at its peak—an experience you don’t get from a meal kit, or from grocery delivery for that matter. If you’re cooking for a bigger household, meal kits can also lose their utility quite quickly. A convenient option for two can become a much larger expense for a family of four or six.
What If I Take a Trip Out of Town?
Pretty much every meal kit I’ve tested has an option to pause subscriptions—and there’s no particular limit to how often you can do this. The main thing is to be sure that you’ve canceled with enough lead time. Some services let you cancel or pause delivery as late as the Friday before a Monday delivery. HelloFresh requires five days’ notice. Some, like Hungryroot, may lock in next week’s order as early as the previous Monday, depending on where you live. Read your terms of service, and act accordingly.
How to Optimize Meal Kits
Don’t order too many meals per week: You know the old John Lennon line: Life is what happens when you’re busy out eating a random burrito, then thinking guiltily about the meal kit at home in your fridge. Aspirations are great, but don’t order more meals than you’re likely to make, or you’ll be sad. Err on the side of caution. Order just enough meals per week that making yourself a recipe from your HelloFresh or Home Chef box is still a delight and a convenience and an overall boon to your life—not an obligation. For me, a somewhat improvisational and impulsive person, three meals a week is the sweet spot. The prospect of a few easy meals usually saves me from an impulse weeknight DoorDash.”
Make room in your fridge: Meal kits take the place of a lot of grocery shopping. But they’re also a lot of food, and a lot to keep organized. What I like to do is clear a tall enough space in my fridge to put the whole meal kit box in the fridge, after pulling out the cold packs: This way, I’m not left worrying about which groceries belong to the meal kit, and I won’t lose any ingredients. I can just pull the whole box out when I want to make a meal. That said, some plans like Home Chef, HelloFresh, and Green Chef are very good at organizing each meal into its own separate bag. An added bonus from these more organized plans is that you’ll be able to use less space in your fridge. Over time, this will matter.
Check the recipe cards to make sure you have everything you need to make a recipe: Most meal kits expect that you’ll have certain staple ingredients in your home, usually including oil and butter. Recipes also have requirements for cookware. Check this before you start a recipe. Nothing worse than realizing you need an absentee stick of butter on step 5, with carrots already browning in the toaster oven.
Remember, you owe nothing to the recipe: Meal kit services hire lovely recipe developers, of course. And on the best meal kits, these chefs have spent a lot of time optimizing each recipe. But you owe them nothing—nothing! Add spices, change steps, season food when you want to season it. Meal kits can teach you a lot about how to make a good meal, and shake you out of tired culinary routines. But it’s your meal. Make it how you like. Have fun.
How Do We Test Meal Kits?
Chances are, wherever you are, whatever week it is, I’m testing a meal kit right now. I constantly cycle among various meal kits, testing and retesting each of my top picks at least once a year—and often multiple times per year.
I order at least four meals from each, and prepare meals according to instructions and see how well it goes. I check my own prep times against the advertised prep times (rarely an exercise in honesty!), and take note of any inconsistencies, vagueness, or frustration in the recipe card instructions. If you needlessly recommend a nonstick pan, I like you less, especially if you tell me I should heat said pan before adding food—or you later make mention of browned fond in the recipe. Nonstick isn’t cast iron or carbon, there’s no fond.
I check for the quality and freshness of the produce, and do the same for the meat. Where possible, I also look into where the meat was sourced, and check on the reputation, safety, and standards of the meat suppliers. If a meal kit swears it’s gluten-free, I check on this—calling certifying organizations where relevant.
I usually try to order as varied a menu a possible, checking in on gluten-free meals, a seafood item, a vegetarian item, and white and dark meat item—as well as meals that draw (or attempt to draw) from onspirations all over the globe. Sometimes, I test the same meal kit multiple times for different dietary needs, and our vegan tester, Molly Higgins, often tests the same meal kit I do but with a different focus.
More Meal Kits We Liked
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Sunbasket ($12 to $14 per serving): Sunbasket is a plan that focuses heavily on fresh, organic ingredients, and offers a whole lot of variety and good cooking techniques, including deglazing and attentiveness to saucing. And like Hungryroot, it also offers breakfasts and snacks to supplement meal options with little extras like coconut yogurt and sous-vide egg bites. The meal kit also lets you filter out allergen-containing items. My colleague Louryn Strampe loved the flexibility and add-ons (and even some crickets!) On my most recent test, I enjoyed in particular an excellent Greek chicken and orzo salad dish—and wonder of wonders, the advertised prep time was actually the actual prep time (about 30 minutes). The focus on organic ingredients does make Sunbasket one of the more expensive meal kit options.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage; Getty Images
Dinnerly ($8 to $9 per serving): Marley Spoon’s lower-cost meal kit, Dinnerly was long WIRED’s budget pick. Frankly, it’s still a good affordable pick. It’s also a stolidly meat-and-potatoes pick, and often straightforwardly Midwestern in its recipes. The proteins are generous and of excellent quality, and the produce is fresh. The meals are balanced. But the recipe development and instructions weren’t quite up to Marley Spoon standards on my most recent test of the kit, though I did love the middle-American trashiness and hold-my-beer inventiveness of a “Reuben meatloaf” stuffed with sauerkraut and caraway seeds. This year I ended up preferring the meals I tried from EveryPlate, which has the further merit of being a buck cheaper a meal.
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Thistle ($13 to $16 per serving): A prior top pick for solo diners, Thistle is mostly a plant-based meal kit—but there’s a $3 option to add sustainable meats to any otherwise vegan meal. It’s also so local and seasonal that the West and East coasts have different menus, and the whole middle of the country except Chicago gets none. (You can check your zip code here to see if you can get delivery.) WIRED reviewer Adrienne So has used Thistle as a means to get herself to eat more vegetables, and thus avoid a life of rickets and/or scurvy. But especially, it’s friendly to the solo diner, with individually prepared meals with low to no prep. Portions are generous enough to split among meals, and in a nice turn for those who hate having to dispose of boxes, Thistle’s drivers will pick up the cooler bag that housed last week’s meal and replace it with a new one full of food. Vegan tester Molly Higgins‘ favorite meals from Thistle were a whirlwind of textures, including a Mexican-inspired corn and poblano chile salad with adobo pinto beans and a chilled lemongrass-accented rice noodle bowl that mixed spice, tang, crisply fresh veggies, and deep umami from mushrooms and seaweed. She still dreams about it sometimes.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Tovala ($13 a serving): It’s not every day you get to try something that feels so new. Tovala offers perhaps the most ambitious solution to ready-to-heat and prepared meal delivery I’ve seen: The meal kits come with an oven! In contrast to the sogginess of many prepared meals, Tovala’s recipes come in little foil pans with recipes custom-designed for a little steam oven. The results are often delicious, especially a recent sweet chili-glazed salmon with pickled veg and noodles, and the QR code scanning function makes each recipe seamless to cook. Stick with the meal plan for six weeks, and in the bargain you get a quite affordable and powerful little convection oven, toaster, and steamer. Tovala is best as a solution for the solo diner: Meals aren’t big enough for couples, and servings are one at a time.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Gobble ($12 to $17 a serving): Gobble was our prior top pick for fast-cooked meals, in part because its speed-demon meals also offered interesting and worldly flavors. Indeed, our most recent test included Caribbean rondon, Indonesian peanut curry, and steak vierge. But while the flavors have stayed interesting, the focus on fast cooking appears to have waned since my colleague Louryn Strampe tested Gobble—and cook time estimates aren’t printed on the recipe cards. I’m still in the process of re-testing this kit, but for now Hungryroot has taken the fast-cooking crown. For small households, Gobble is also among the most expensive kits. Ordering fewer than 8 meals a week costs $15+ per serving.
Nurture Life ($8 to $10 per serving): Nurture Life is like a restaurant kids’ menu, in ready-to-eat meal kit form. We loved the idea behind this fresh-made, never-frozen delivery meal plan when we tested it a few years back: a bunch of toddler- and slightly bigger kid-friendly meals, from mac and cheese to spaghetti and meatballs to myriad variations on the chicken nugget. The meals are priced about the same as kid menu items, and each contains vegetables alongside the greatest hits.
Veestro ($13+ per serving): WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe enjoyed Veestro as a ready-to-eat vegan option, with premade meals delivered fresh, but with freezable options so you can have extra meals on hand in a pinch. The service offers a number of filters for other dietary requirements, and satisfying taste and texture—not always a guarantee on ready-to-eat meals.
Splendid Spoon ($9 to $13 per serving): Splendid Spoon is a nutrition delivery kit that offers a plethora of plant-based smoothies, soups, bowls, noodles, and shots. Everything here is natural, plant-based, and free of gluten or GMOs, including spaghetti and plant-based “meatballs.” WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe has a big yen for the smoothies in particular ($10 apiece), but wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity of a lemon juice shot that comes as part of a five-pack of dense 3-ounce superfoods.
Daily Harvest (prices vary): Daily Harvest is another ready-to-eat meal delivery service specializing in dietary restrictions plant-based, gluten- and dairy-free. Smoothies feature, as do harvest bowls, pastas, and grains. Calories are low. Ingredients are often inventive. The meal’s a lifesaver for the solo vegan eater without time to prep a meal, and WIRED vegan reviewer Molly Higgins appreciated that the meals mostly relied on the natural flavors of the vegetables themselves, accented with flavors like curry and lemongrass. As with a lot of frozen meals, however, texture wasn’t a strong suit.
Factor ($12 to $15 a serving): Factor is a delivery meal plan run by HelloFresh with ready-to-eat meals that look a lot like TV dinners. But there’s a twist: They’ve never been frozen. They were made fresh in a commissary kitchen, and shipped out with cold packs. It’s kinda like restaurant leftovers. This means that proteins in particular often maintain their texture quite well, including a chimichurri filet mignon I couldn’t believe I microwaved. Some meals, especially carb-avoidant or keto meals, are oddly mushy. But meals centered on proteins and whole starches like potatoes or rice tended to fare quite well. In fact, a recent test of Factor’s high protein plan was my favorite experience with the meal kit, and included wild rice and excellent pork loin. I do wish they’d shed their reliance on the microwave, however: When I went off-script and used a toaster oven or the Ninja Crispi air fryer, I had much better results than with the nuker. Like many ready-to-eat meals, it’s a bit more expensive than the kits you cook yourself.
Meal Kits We Didn’t Like
Sakara Life ($28+ per serving), Sakara Life offers plant-based weekly menus in fresh, prepared portions, with greens, flavorful sauces, all-organic ingredients, and textural add-ons like seeds or berries. But it’s among the most expensive meal plans we’ve tested, and neither WIRED reviewer who tried it has really cottoned to the thing. Tester Louryn Strampe questioned the science on health claims for detoxes and cleanses, while calling Sakara “egregiously expensive” and full of “bitter veggies and tart fruits.” Vegan tester Molly Higgins, meanwhile, said Sakara Life’s tinctures and metabolism supplements didn’t agree with her system, and that the mostly raw-food plan made her long for “human food.”
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage; Getty Images
Diet-to-Go ($10 to $13 per serving, plus shipping): Diet-to-Go predates the modern meal kit. Founded more than 30 years ago in Virginia, it’s a diet plan much in the tradition of Jenny Craig, offering low-calorie microwaveable meals meant to act as total meal replacement. Keto and diabetes-friendly options exist, though the most popular “Balance” plan is geared toward weight loss, with calories limited to 1,600 a day for men and a mere 1,200 for women. Anyway, as is often true with microwaved meals that may or may not arrive frozen (it depends on the season, and where you are), proteins and starches fared better than veggies, which tended to be limp and soggy. Meals were healthy, but not always flavorful, and there were a few real misses.
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Honorable Mentions
Now that the majority of new headphones and earbuds offer at least a modicum of noise canceling, it’d be impossible (and unproductive) to list everything we like above. If you haven’t yet found your fit, here are more favorites worth considering.
Beyerdynamic Amiron 300 for $280: These simple-looking earbuds are a great way to experience quiet luxury. They have 10 hours of battery life with noise canceling engaged, and they have some of the best-sounding drivers for vocals I’ve heard in any earbuds.
Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds for $298: Sony’s fifth-generation flagship earbuds slim down while stepping up. These buds are smaller and slicker (maybe too slick when it comes to grabbing them) than the previous XM4 buds. As before, they provide great sound and noise canceling that outduels plenty of options, with a cost to match. In true Sony style, they serve up a truckload of adaptive features and EQ controls while retaining a solid eight hours of playback time per charge with ANC and 12 hours without it. —Ryan Waniata
Soundcore Life Q30 for $60–$85: Anker’s Soundcore line is nothing if not value-conscious, and the Life Q30 provide an embarrassing list of extras for their bargain-basement pricing. You’ll get clear and warm sound, great features, tons of battery life, and noise canceling that gets the job done even on a long flight, though it can’t keep up with flagship pairs. It’s hard to complain when they cost hundreds less, especially with sale pricing that sometimes drops to around $50.
Sony WH-1000XM4 for $250–$350: Sony’s WH-1000X lineup has produced some of the best noise-canceling headphones for nearly a decade, and the aging WH-1000XM4 are no exception. They periodically go on sale for under $300, but it’s getting harder to find them below full price, which is tough for a five-year-old model.
Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 Earbuds for $400: Bowers & Wilkins’ Pi8 offer a sleek, comfortable design, solid (albeit not Bose-beating) noise canceling, and great sound. Call quality is also excellent, which makes these perhaps the perfect business-class earbuds, though their hefty price won’t appeal to everyone.
Bowers and Wilkins PX7 S2e for $400: The Px7 S2e feature upgraded audio quality for fantastic sound in stylish and sophisticated design. They’re also among the most comfortable headphones we’ve tested, but their noise canceling doesn’t rise to the level of the top players for the money.
Beyerdynamic Aventho 300 for $400: These over-ears from Beyerdynamic have the brand’s classic studio sound, with a tight crisp high range and punchy lows. The downside is that they don’t cancel noise quite as well as models from Sony, Bose, and others above. Still, they sound great and are worth considering, especially if you can snag them on sale.
Soundcore Space A40 for $60: Another top value buy from Anker’s Soundcore brand, the Space A40 are some of our favorite cheap earbuds, especially as their price continues to fall. You’ll find a classy design, lots of features, quality sound, and great noise canceling for their class.
Apple Beats Fit Pro for $199: The Beats Fit Pro are an aging but still knockout pair of wireless buds, with great sound, easy-access physical buttons, and solid noise canceling to boot. Add to that six hours of battery life, spatial audio compatibility with Apple Music and other services, and you’ve got one of the best pairs of earbuds ever “designed in California.”
Epos/Sennheiser Adapt 660 for $210: Want excellent sound, a comfortable fit, and high-quality noise-canceling tech for less than what you’d pay for Sony or Bose headphones? Check out this collaboration between Epos and Sennheiser. The Epos/Sennheiser Adapt 660 sound fantastic and are some of the lightest noise-canceling headphones I’ve ever worn. They also feature excellent microphones for great silence on calls and Zooms.
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You’ll then be prompted to insert your USB drive and choose it from the drop-down list on screen. Do make sure you select the correct USB drive, and not an external disk that has information on it that you need. Eventually, you’ll be told your USB installer drive is ready: The necessary downloading and installing took 30 minutes or so for me, but will depend on the computer you’re using and your internet connection.
Use ChromeOS Flex on an Older Laptop
You can try ChromeOS Flex before installing it.Courtesy of David Nield
You then need to boot your aging PC or Mac—the one we’re giving a second life—from the USB drive you just created. This will usually involve pressing a specific key as your laptop starts up: If you’re not sure what it is, run a web search, check in your laptop’s documentation, or see Google’s list here. For Macs, start up the system either by pressing the power key and then the Option key (Intel chips), or holding down the power key (Apple chips) until the boot options appear.
You’ll see the ChromeOS Flex welcome screen appear, so click Get started to do just that. You’re then faced with two choices: Install ChromeOS Flex, which will overwrite Windows or macOS, and Try it first, which lets you run Google’s operating system from the USB drive without affecting anything on your laptop.
If you’re looking to revitalize an old laptop, you’ll want to choose the first option, but Try it first lets you see what ChromeOS Flex is all about before you commit. Either way, click Next, and you’ll be taken through the usual set up process for ChromeOS, which will ask you to log in with a Google user account and start syncing your data over.
If you’re never used a Chromebook before, it’s essentially a Chrome web browser with some extras, such as a taskbar along the bottom. Use the launcher button down in the bottom left hand corner to show all the installed apps, which will include links to web apps as well as the Files app for local files and Settings for configuring ChromeOS Flex.
Open up the Settings and you get the usual personalization options you find in Google Chrome for Windows or macOS, plus some extras to cover input devices, Bluetooth connectivity, and network options. You should find ChromeOS Flex automatically picks up your Wi-Fi connection, trackpad, and mouse, especially if your computer is listed as certified for ChromeOS Flex.
A 2022 California law mandates net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and negative emissions every year thereafter. The state can achieve this but will have to act quickly and thoroughly, and success will require new technologies for sectors difficult to decarbonize, a new Stanford University study finds. The state will need to decarbonize not only cars and electricity but also trucks, trains, planes, agriculture, and factories, while slashing pollution from its oil refineries.
The research team created a new model that projects emissions, society-wide economic costs, and consumption of energy resources under many scenarios for California to reach net-zero emissions by 2045. The model uses data from U.S. federal agencies, national laboratories, California state agencies, past studies, and various other online public sources. (Data sources are provided in the study’s Appendix B.) The model forecasts that 170 gigawatts of new generation and 54 gigawatts of storage will be needed by 2045, compared with California’s current generation capacity of 80 GW, as transportation, buildings, and industry transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources of electricity. The expansion of electricity will be needed despite expected gains in energy efficiency in many technologies.
The study, published this week in the journal Energy Policy, provides a detailed roadmap for meeting California’s net-zero mandate. First, commercially available technologies can slash the state’s emissions in half. Technologies proven at pilot scale that need commercial development and lower costs could address another 25%. The final quarter will rely on inventions still being worked on in laboratories.
“One key to success will be building an emission-free power grid using a combination of solar, wind, batteries, and sources of clean, firm power like natural gas with carbon capture and storage or nuclear power,” said the study’s senior author, Sally Benson, the Precourt Family Professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
The study, which was funded by several industry associations and trade unions impacted by the state’s move to net-zero emissions, also examines some policy and economic implications for the state.
“We will need to build this infrastructure at an unprecedented pace to put proven technologies to work at the scale we need,” added Benson, who was the chief strategist for the energy transition at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy from 2021 to 2023.
First 52%: Commercial technologies
The necessary technologies already in commercial use that could halve California emissions include renewable electricity generation, batteries for storing that energy, electric passenger vehicles, heat pumps, and machines that produce methane fuel from wastewater, manure, and food and plant waste.
However, significant administrative and logistical barriers could stymie deployment of these technologies at the required speed and scale. The state is already experiencing overwhelmingly long queues to connect new renewable energy generation and grid-scale energy storage to the grid. Local ordinances frequently block permits for new power plants. Other obstacles include the early termination of federal tax credits for EVs and home solar, federal challenges to California banning sales of gas-powered cars in 10 years, elevated financing costs, and supply chain disruptions.
“California can build the infrastructure it needs to meet the 2045 mandate, but the state must implement policies to overcome regulatory and logistical barriers,” said the study’s lead author, Joshua Neutel, a Ph.D. student in civil and environmental engineering, a joint department of Stanford’s School of Engineering and Doerr School of Sustainability.
Several readily available measures save more money than they cost to implement, after accounting for state and federal incentives—many of which are slated to end in the coming months. The authors estimate electric passenger vehicles, solar and wind power, reduced in-state oil production, and replacement of fossil-based gas with methane fuel made through anaerobic digestion could eliminate 44% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions (based on estimated 2045 emissions if the state were to continue business as usual).
Next 25%: Early-stage technologies
The authors estimate a quarter of emissions abatement could come from technologies in the early stages of commercialization, including zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles, clean industrial heating from electricity and hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
Eliminating carbon emissions from heavy-duty vehicles could reduce California emissions 12%. However, emission-free trucks still need to improve their range and cargo capacity while reducing charging time and purchase price. Another area in early-stage deployment involves switching several industries from fossil fuels to carbon-free electricity and green hydrogen. This accounts for 5% of emission reductions in the authors’ projections.
CCS entails capturing carbon dioxide directly at the source, such as at gas-fired power plants and factories, and securely sequestering the emissions deep underground. In some hard-to-decarbonize sectors, like oil refining and producing cement, hydrogen, and some electricity, CCS may be the most viable option in the near and medium term, according to the authors. The study confirms prior findings that a limited amount of natural gas power paired with CCS (34 of 170 gigawatts, or about 20% of new generation capacity) could vastly reduce the number and costs of wind and solar farms. Pairing bioenergy with CCS could remove another 2% of emissions from 2019 levels to reach net-zero emissions.
Final 23%: Research-phase technologies
Nascent technologies still in the research phase include decarbonized trains, planes, and boats; low-emission refrigerants; and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere. Replacing fossil fuels for planes, trains, and boats with electricity, hydrogen, and renewable fuels faces challenges from their weight, cargo capacity, costs, and the limited availability of clean fuels.
Traditional refrigerants are powerful greenhouse gases up to 2,000 times more potent than CO2 during their first 100 years in the atmosphere. Climate-friendly alternatives, possibly including CO2 as a refrigerant, are still in the early stages of development.
CDR will play a significant role, with the researchers’ model projecting that California will need to sequester about 45-75 million tons of CO2 annually by 2045 through CDR, in line with the state’s 2022 forecast. Explored CDR options include bioenergy with CCS and direct air capture plants. The prior emits but then sequesters biogenic CO2 through industrial processes like hydrogen and electricity generation. The latter extracts CO2 directly from ambient air and stores it underground.
“If net-zero by 2045 is a binding constraint, then large amounts of CDR will be needed,” said study co-author Sarah Saltzer, managing director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage. Current methods for extracting carbon dioxide from ambient air remain costly and energy intensive.
Political and economic implications
The study recommends several policy changes, including streamlining the permitting of, and grid connections for, new generation, energy storage, and power lines. This year, the state has taken initial steps to do this.
The research advises that California should consider incentives for adding CCS to existing natural gas-fired power plants. For example, it could qualify such power plants as one way for utilities to meet the state’s renewable portfolio standard. This could prevent expensive overbuilding of solar power plus batteries.
This work also supports maintenance of the state’s EV sales mandate for 100% clean vehicles by 2035 and consideration of similar policies for building appliances. Policymakers could develop roadmaps for advancing “renewable natural gas” and “renewable diesel,” which are chemically equivalent to fossil-based natural gas and diesel but made from biological feedstocks, said the researchers. These fuels have a limited global supply but could be vital for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors.
“Reaching net-zero by 2045 is not so much a challenge in cost,” said Benson, “but a challenge in getting the necessary technologies available in time and establishing the social, political, and economic environment to deploy these technologies rapidly and broadly.”
More information:
Joshua Neutel et al, What will it take to get to net-zero emissions in California?, Energy Policy (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114848
Citation:
Study outlines steps for California to reach net-zero emissions by 2045 (2025, September 28)
retrieved 28 September 2025
from https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-outlines-california-net-emissions.html
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