How the World Powers Itself


map of coal power station locations around the world

You may be taught lots about how the world powers itself from the International Power Monitor’s Energy Tracker. This interactive map reveals the areas of practically 18,000 energy stations in 200 nations all over the world, categorized by energy sector.

Utilizing the map’s filter controls it’s potential to discover the place various kinds of energy stations are distributed all over the world. This permits you, for instance, to research which nations are nonetheless most reliant on thermal energy (coal, oil, fuel, nuclear, geothermal, bioenergy) and which have shifted most efficiently to renewables (photo voltaic, wind, hydro).

For those who use the filter controls to view the areas of operational and deliberate coal energy stations, you possibly can see how western Europe has virtually utterly moved away from soiled coal energy – aside from Germany which remains to be vastly reliant on its coal fired energy stations. Change the filters to view nuclear energy stations and you’ll see one of many the reason why Germany remains to be so reliant on coal (the final three nuclear energy vegetation in Germany have been shut down final 12 months).

map of wind power stations in Europe

Wind energy stations in Europe

The distribution of wind energy stations in Europe additionally reveals an attention-grabbing image. For some cause the Alps and the Pyrenees are virtually utterly empty of wind energy. My guess is that valley areas will not be nice for wind energy stations as a result of wind circumstances are too variable and that putting wind energy stations on the highest altitudes is just too pricey (by way of development and connecting to energy grids). 

There may be some aesthetic concerns why wind generators will not be caught on the highest of mountains. Wind generators could also be seen as anathema to the pure fantastic thing about mountain areas. There may be some zoning difficulties in that the Alps and Pyrenees have a variety of environmentally protected areas and nationwide parks. Though these concerns do not appear to have an effect on the development of hydro-power stations. Take a look at the placement of hydro-power on the Energy Tracker map and you’ll see that quite a lot of hydro-power stations have been inbuilt each the Alps and the Pyrenees.

I’m additionally intrigued by the areas of nuclear energy stations all over the world. Regardless of having giant coastlines France and america place a variety of their nuclear energy stations inland. In a lot of the remainder of the world, the place nations have giant coastlines (for instance China and Japan) nuclear energy stations are usually sited virtually completely subsequent to the ocean (oceans provide a dependable and ample supply of cooling water to dissipate the warmth generated in the course of the nuclear fission course of).



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