How the World Powers Itself

You can learn a lot about how the world powers itself from the Global Energy Monitor's Power Tracker. This interactive map shows the locations of nearly 18,000 power stations in 200 countries around the world, categorized by power sector.

Using the map's filter controls it is possible to explore where different types of power stations are distributed around the world. This allows you, for example, to investigate which countries are still most reliant on thermal power (coal, oil, gas, nuclear, geothermal, bioenergy) and which have shifted most successfully to renewables (solar, wind, hydro).

If you use the filter controls to view the locations of operational and planned coal power stations, you can see how western Europe has almost completely moved away from dirty coal power - except for Germany which is still hugely reliant on its coal fired power stations. Change the filters to view nuclear power stations and you can see one of the reasons why Germany is still so reliant on coal (the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down last year).

Wind power stations in Europe

The distribution of wind power stations in Europe also reveals an interesting picture. For some reason the Alps and the Pyrenees are almost completely empty of wind power. My guess is that valley locations are not great for wind power stations because wind conditions are too variable and that placing wind power stations at the highest altitudes is too costly (in terms of construction and connecting to power grids). 

There may also be some aesthetic considerations why wind turbines are not stuck on the top of mountains. Wind turbines may be seen as anathema to the natural beauty of mountain regions. There may also be some zoning difficulties in that the Alps and Pyrenees have a lot of environmentally protected areas and national parks. Although these considerations don't seem to affect the construction of hydro-power stations. Check out the location of hydro-power on the Power Tracker map and you can see that a number of hydro-power stations have been built in both the Alps and the Pyrenees.

I am also intrigued by the locations of nuclear power stations around the world. Despite having large coastlines France and the United States place a lot of their nuclear power stations inland. In much of the rest of the world, where countries have large coastlines (for example China and Japan) nuclear power stations tend to be sited almost exclusively next to the sea (oceans offer a reliable and abundant source of cooling water to dissipate the heat generated during the nuclear fission process).