Global trend in Energy consumption for years 2006-2017 across energy types: Stacked Area Chart
A Stacked area chart gives us a good understanding of the rate at which world energy consumption is changing with time along with the trends for individual components.
Tools Used: Plotly
Country-wise percentage production across various energy types: Sunburst Plot
Usage: World energy profile consists of Non renewable energy sources such as coal, oil and gas as well as renewable sources like hydro energy, nuclear energy and other renewables like solar, wind, biogas etc. Sunburst Chart allows the user to interactively drill down and understand the percentage contribution of a region to World energy Production detailed for each energy type.
Critique: Sunburst is a form of a radial chart which breaks out general categories into subsets to better understand the components that make up or contribute to the whole. This form a visualisation is similar to a treemap however it is easier to see multiple layers of data with sunburst, while the treemap is better for comparing categories within the same hierarchical layer.
Disadvantages: Deeper slices exaggerate their size, and look visually larger. This type of visualization requires the quantitative comparison of angles, instead of lengths, which is difficult for the human eye.
Tools used: SunburstR
Figure above shows the Sunburst visualization of the World Energy production. Figure 1 in the visualization represents the country-wise percentage production across various energy types. The sunburst plot is interactive and can be used to dig deeper to understand the percentage production of the energy type to the country level. For example,as revealed in Figure 2, China produces 13.4% of the total energy of the world through Coal. Similarly, we can explore different energy type productions.
Primary Energy consumption for 2017 across the World: Interactive World Map
To understand who the major primary energy consumers of the world and their respective CO2 emissions are, we have implemented an interactive world map and a bar graph both in plotly, which are then integrated using shiny as shown in the figure below. World map is being made using leaflet and icon markers are used to indicate OECD and OPEC countries.
Critique: This method was chosen to make the exploration interesting. Choropleth Map was not considered as countries are custom aggregated in the report and for some countries values are not listed.
Tools Used: Plotly
In the map, bars are sorted in descending order and when a user clicks on a bar, corresponding country is highlighted in the map and a tool-tip displays the Energy consumption in Mtoe, along with the CO2 emissions and whether the country belongs to OECD/OPAC. Alternatively, the user can click on any country of interest on the map to get the information on the primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions for the particular country. This is designed to make the exploration interesting and intuitive. In this case, choropleth map will not be an efficient visualization as countries are custom aggregated in the report and for some countries values are not listed.
Country-wise Energy Consumption Portfolio and energy trends: Geofacets
Geofacets are used to visualize data for each geographical entity, with the resulting set of visualizations being laid out in a grid that mimics the original geographic topology as closely as possible for the region. Each geofacet visualization for a selected region consists of a horizontal bar chart for energy consumption portfolio for all the countries in the region.
Figure 1 in the visualization below shows Country-wise Energy Consumption Portfolio which allows viewers to compare energy consumption distribution across types within a country as well as across countries in the region.
Another geofacet graph which has an additional option to select the energy type is used to display the trends in consumption of the energy type across countries of the region.
Figure 2 in the visualization above shows evolution of Energy usage per country over time for each energy type. (time-series in geofacet)
Critique: Given the custom aggregations of countries in the report as well as the unavailability of data for few countries , geofacets were the best choice however comparisons across countries form different regions is not direct. Choropleth and Tile maps limit analysis to one variable which is color encoded to aid analysis. Quantifying intensity of color is difficult and choropleths are known to favour large geographic entities over smaller ones.
Disadvantages: A geofacet grid is only meaningful if the person already has an understanding of the underlying original geography. Also, this form of visualization takes more space and representing some of the geographical entities on grid layout can be challenging.
Tools used:”geofacet” in R, Geo Grid Designer app for creating grids for each region.
Production vs Consumption landscape for each energy type: Interactive Scatter Plot
We have come up with an interactive scatter plot to understand how does each country stand in the production vs consumption landscape for each energy type.
Total energy production and consumption for each country are calculated and percentage of production and percentage of consumption that the country attributes to each energy type is calculated.
For each of the energy categories namely oil, gas, coal, other renewables(Hydro and Nuclear data is not considered as a pane as production data is not available for these energy types.) countries are plotted on a scatter plot of percentage production vs percentage consumption. The size of the bubble on the scatter plot indicates the absolute amount that the country produces and the color of the bubble indicates the absoule amount that the country consumes of that energy type, as shown in the visualization below.
The plot is interactive and the selection of a country/bubble on one pane, highlights the respective positions of the country in other panes aiding insights discovery, as shown in the visualization below:
Tools used: Plotly with Crosstalk for interactivity
Relative positioning of countries in terms of usage per energy type: Ternary Plot
A Terenary plot is used for understanding the relative positioning of countries in terms of usage of Renewable, Hydro & Nuclear energy and non renewable energy sources.
Usage: This plot at a glance helps in identifying countries that source their energy needs from renewables compared to non renewables etc. Also the bar chart of the absolute measure of the usage updates with the country selected in ternary chart to aid exploration and discovery. Year slider lets user to visualize the positioning of the country each year. And a slide through years 2006-2017 helps in identifying if a country has taken a serious stand on adopting sustainable energy options.
Critique: Given that energy data logically can be divided in to three categories i.e non-renewable, hydor and nuclear and other renewables, ternary plot aids in plotting large number of countries. Dominant characters are identified and clusters emerge enabling classifications/identification of trends
Tools used: plotly