Visualizing Climate and Energy Data
There is no lack of data about how much energy people use around the world, how much carbon dioxide is released from human activities, and its relation to climate change. There’s an abundance of climate data that has been collected from both current and historic measurements—including from things like ice cores and rocks, whose age is known, to confirm how humans are changing the Earth’s climate and making it warmer. It is clear that data science has been instrumental in ascertaining that climate change is not just real, but extremely serious and threatening. Climate scientists and data scientists looking at the data recognize how bad things are. But there’s a big difference between taking current and historic measurements and putting the data together in such a way that regular people, those who are not data experts, can readily see what is going on and innately appreciate the magnitude of this crisis. Unfortunately, that is actually quite difficult.
This fact explains why so many people are not alarmed by what’s happening with the climate. Most people have very low comprehension of data and, even if they are told how bad it is, they don’t internalize the message of the data in a way that results in meaningful changes to their stress level such that they want to take action. It explains why, when shown the graph to the right, most people would not find it that disturbing, despite the symbolic use of blood red for the 2024 temperature line.
In order to help people grok what is happening, we search for really exceptional depictions of this data. We have found a number of sources for data visualizations which really get people thinking about climate, energy typies, and their relative costs, risks and benefits. Fortunately, when using real data that is rendered creatively, it can provide great clarity on what are the best solutions for a world that is enormously energy-hungry but which is challenged to reduce carbon emissions. The following table lists some of the best sources of data visualization we have found that help us make those connections more clearly. (If you have other sources to recommend, please let us know in the comment area.)
Sources of Data Visualizations
Sample Images
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes comprehensive statistical estimates that explore energy production, consumption, prices and expenditure, with historical figures and state-by-state breakdowns. They show on a monthly, annual and decadal basis how much total primary energy we use and where it comes from, providing both graphs and data tables. Many of their online and downloadable graphs allow the viewer to adjust them in an interactive way, whether by category of energy or time frame, so that you can get to the exact type of data that you are looking for.
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Electricity Map: The Electricity Map allows you to explore the climate impact of electricity for many countries globally. It depicts the carbon intensity of the energy usage in a particular area on a real-time basis. All greenhouse gas emissions (both CO2 and other greenhouse gases such as methane) that have gone into producing the electricity which is being consumed in an area (including electricity imported from other areas but used within a different region). Calculations utilize a life cycle analysis (LCA) approach, meaning that emissions arising from the whole life cycle of power plants (construction, fuel production, operational emissions, and decommissioning) are included in the calculation. The Electricity Map, developed and maintained by Tomorrow, a small Danish/French, continues to get better and better and is very popular. Their goal is to help humanity reach a sustainable state of existence by quantifying, and making disparate data widely accessible, visualizing the climate impact of the daily choices we make. They develop and compute all the data for their map from publicly available data sources, published by electricity grid operators, official agencies, and others. To see more specifics on the origins of the data for a particular region, click on that region.
Our World in Data is an online publication launched by Max Roser in 2011 that continues to add new graphics and get better at rendering the data visually. Max has been joined by Hannah Ritchie, and Pablo Rosado and they now have dedicated pages which group specific sets of data topics, whether health or climate change and provide introductions, key insights, a listing of charts and other organizing help. Their CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions page links to 166 charts, all of which are good and range from an exploration of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, to how countries’ emissions compare, to a sector-by-sector analysis of where GHG’s come from. Our World in Data is highly reliable and well-rendered. These data experts provide us with a better understanding of the trends in health, food provision, the growth and distribution of incomes, violence, culture, energy use, education, and environmental changes are empirically analyzed and visualized in this web publication. For each topic the quality of the data is discussed and, by pointing the visitor to the sources, this website is also a database of databases. Covering all of these aspects in one resource makes it possible to understand how the observed long-run trends are interlinked.
The Yale Program on Climate Communication, led by Anthony Leiserowitz, has been conducting regular surveys on how Americans’ think about climate change for since 2006. They investigate how and why citizens in the US and around the world are, or are not responding to climate change, and identify key audiences requiring tailored communications. They then develop and implement strategies to build the capacity of these audiences to engage in climate change solutions. Public opinion about global warming is an important influence on decision making about policies to reduce global warming or prepare for the impacts, but American opinions vary widely depending on where people live. The YCOM team of scientists has developed a geographic and statistical model to downscale national public opinion results to the state, congressional district, and county levels. This enables better estimates of public opinion across the country and reveal a rich picture of the diversity of Americans’ beliefs, attitudes, and policy support by region. As of 2023, surveys show that 72% of Americans think global warming is happening. The YCOM model estimates, however, are also able to show that, for example, while only 60% of people in Emery County, Utah agree, 83% in neighboring Grand County, Utah believe global warming is happening.
Tableau Public is the place where people who have access to data can learn to use Tableau Software’s proprietary data visualization tools to generate both beautiful and interactive data visualizations (called vizzes) that bring that data to life. Tableau software offers very sophisticated tools to help people both depict and interact with the data to bolster better understanding of data. Tableau Public provides a platform that enables you to begin to learn how to use the Tableau tools and to see what visualizations others have published. Tableau allows you to use data from Excel, Google Docs, Airtable or wherever you have it, to quickly and easily develop stunning visualizations. It is believed that in 2030 the world will generate 150 times the amount of data as in 2020 and have 75 times the number of information sources. Within these data are huge opportunities for human advancement. But to turn opportunities into reality, people need the power of data at their fingertips. Tableau is building software to transform the way people use data to solve problems.
The Washington Post: Mapping how the United States generates its electricity. Using data from the Energy Information Administration, the Washington Post has put together an extraordinary data visualization that shows how the United States has generated its electricity in 2015. They have mapped every power source and categorized it by state, type and size, so we can see the way each state gets its energy. From this visualization, we learn that: There are 1,793 natural gas-powered electricity plants in the United States, which generated 34 percent of the nation’s electricity last year; 400 coal-powered electric plants — which generated 30%; 61 nuclear electric plants — which generated 20%; 1,444 hydroelectric plants — generated 7%; 999 wind-powered electric plants — generated 6%; 1,721 solar-powered electric plants — generated 1% and 1,076 oil-powered electric plants — generated just over half of 1% of the nation’s electricity last year.
US Energy Production Over the Years is an animated visualization of U.S. Energy production from 1993 through 2012 created by the Department of Energy as part of its Energy Maps series. You can see how energy production for biofuels, coal, crude oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and renewables has changed over this period. Left out is hydro-power or, alternatively, it is included in Total Renewables. It is something of a mystery why this data is six years behind. Additionally, the Energy Maps series clearly is not being well supported and is rather badly done, without even an Index that allows you to search the available maps. What is provided is a drop-down list of topic words, which may or may not produce any results. Finally, the web interface formatting for these maps is rather funky. It may help to click on the specific map, to reformat it, however, the quality of this website leaves a lot to be desired.)
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The Visual Capitalist: Jeff Desjardins of the Visual Capital, along with a number of associates, both create and curate enriched visual content focused on emerging trends in business and investing. They take a look at a wide array of infographics and data visualizations that enhance our understanding of the data that provide clues to trends, rates of growth or decline, and changes in prices to increase understanding of investing and company value. (They also host some sponsored content, so be aware.) Examples of useful energy-related content includes: Visualizing U.S. Energy Consumption in One Chart, The Rate of Change in U.S. Energy Consumption, Visualizing the Race for Clean Energy, The Base Metal Boom, The Raw Materials That Fuel the Green Revolution, and the World’s Safest Energy Source.
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The International Energy Agency: The IEA produces many reports about global energy usage and carbon emissions. Since addressing carbon emissions is a global challenge and even the U.S. could not remedy this problem by itself, no assessment of where we on in our battle to prevent catastrophic climate change would be complete without the IEA providing evidence of that progress. Unfortunately, the IEA shows nothing in the way of progress against carbon emissions, despite growth in renewables. This needs to give pause to those who believe that any amount of ramping of renewables by themselves will solve the emission problem, especially when all ramping of renewables is accompanied by even bigger increases in the use of natural gas. Key reports that you need to keep an eye on include: Global Energy & CO2 Status Report, World Energy Outlook, Climate Change, Energy Access, Tracking Clean Energy Progress, and World Energy Investment 2018, among others.
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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL): LLNL produced this Sankey chart with support from the Department of Energy (DOE), using information available from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). This shows the sources of the energy generation consumed in the U.S. in 2017 and the uses of that energy, reported in “Quads,” which is quadrillion btus, starting with the amount that went to generate electricity and then the flows into the various sectors of the economy, namely Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Transportation. The Sankey flow chart is a standard method of data display that enables a great deal of information about energy to be displayed on a single chart. Making the numbers readable sometimes requires a large display, but much of the important information is displayed using colors and line thicknesses. To learn more about LLNL how to read the charts, watch this short, useful video produced by LLNL describing the basics of the Sankey chart.
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