.. title: Electricity Map
.. slug: electricity-map
.. date: 2018-01-23 18:21:18 UTC+01:00
.. tags: electricity, climate-change, data, society
.. description: 
.. type: text

During all the political discussions for the need of clean power, I
always wondered about real data for this domain, i.e. how much of our
electrical power is coming from what sources.  As it wasn't that
important, I never even tried to find any source for this and
continued to live in ignorance.  By sheer accident the situation
changed recently as I learned about the `Electricity Map
<https://www.electricitymap.org/>`_ web site answering exactly this
question in real time.  The site focuses on the release of the green
house gas CO2 to visualize the data.

It is very instructive to study the individual countries, their power
mix and the trade of electricity across the borders.  A few questions
that popped into my mind when visiting it for the first time were
pretty easy to answer:

* Why does Norway have such an excellent CO2 balance?
* Why is France also doing very good?  Ok, so the problems of nuclear
  power plants are beyond the data of this page.
* What is the installed capacity of solar and wind energy in Germany
  compared to nuclear power plants?

.. image:: /images/electricity-map-screenshot.png
   :alt: Electricity Map Screenshot
   :align: center
	 
.. TEASER_END

As you are still reading, I may as well disclose how I learned about
the existence of that web site.  At the end of the talk `A hacker's
guide to Climate Change - What do we know and how do we know it?
<https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9184-a_hacker_s_guide_to_climate_change_-_what_do_we_know_and_how_do_we_know_it>`_
given at the recent `34C3:TUWAT congress
<https://media.ccc.de/c/34c3>`_ the site gets mentioned in the Q&A
section.

The congress took place in Leipzig at the end of December 2017 and has
a lot of very diverse, yet interesting presentations.  It will take me
some more calendar time to watch the ones that caught my attention.
Judging by the view counts of the presentations, I'm absolutely
positive that my interests are somewhat peculiar.