Electricity and heat production accounts for about 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the largest emission sector (source: UN climate panel).
The Map below gives you a snapshot, an almost realtime visual view of, how different countries energy production is composed, how CO2-intensive the production is and how the electricity flows across national borders (go to the source Electricity Map if the map does not show proporly). The greener the color a country has, the less emissions from energy production. Click a country to see details of the country’s capacity eg. water, wind, sun, coal, nuclear power and how much of the capasity is in use now.
For example, one can easily see how variable production from wind and solar power plants affects the energy-mix and CO2 intensity at all times. The first version of the map only had data from Europe, but since then, the United States, New Zealand and parts of Canada and Australia have been added.
Electricity Map was developed by Tomorrow. The project is based on open source, and the map is a “work in progress”. If you are particularly interested you should take a look at the technical explanations. Electricity Map is also awailable as an App “work in progress”. Particularly interested should take a look at the technical explanations. Electricity Map is also available as App on Apple’s AppStore and Google Play.
The developers have made some choices that affect the emission data shown in the map. CO2 intensity from different types of plants / power plants is based on calculated emissions throughout the life cycle of the plant (construction phase, production of fuel, power generation itself, dismantling). For most countries, the average is derived from the UN climate panel. There is little use of data for each power plant. Thus, the map does not divide, for example. between new and old coal power plants, which will have different CO2 intensities. For Norwegian hydropower data from studies made by Østfoldforskning has been used.
For the European countries, most of the real-time data from Entso-E, the organization of the national companies with system responsibility in the power grid, is retrieved. Statnett is a Norwegian member.
EU: Power production becomes less CO2-intensive
The map gives a snapshot of power generation, cross-border exchange and CO2 intensity. But of course it is the overall development over time as a counter. The figure below shows the evolution of CO2 intensity in in power generation in the EU since 1990.
