US Energy History Visualization

Robert Suits, Nathan Matteson, Elisabeth Moyer, Center for Robust Decision-making on Climate and Energy Policy

This animation displays the relative importance of energy sources in the US from 1805 to present, by fuel and sector, as measured in watts per capita. The interactive also shows the changes in energy sources and use over the past 200 years in the U.S. Features of the visualization include allowing the user to view the data while switching between timeline and clickable milestone events.

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Notes from our reviewers

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A useful resource for instruction about graphical presentation of data, graph reading, and understanding the history of energy use in the U.S. Instructions, insights, milestones and additional information (mouse overs) are readily available in the interface. The Insights (including historical events and lessons about US Energy Transitions), milestones, and conceptual links to the underlying journal article are very helpful for providing context, exploring further, and understanding the data.
In this interactive, students engage with energy data and examine energy sources. Multiple data presentation views (e.g. type of fuel and consumption sector) allows the user to engage with the data via a few controls such as mouse-overs, radio button options, toggles and a timeline slider; additional historical information is available in bullets for key milestone events. The static graphs below can be used to examine one variable at a time and are useful to make sense of the relatively complex interactive showing change in energy sources and sector requirements simultaneously, which are made more difficult when electric power gains importance. Insights are provided for contextual understanding and depth. The visualization uses real data backed by a peer reviewed journal article with 70+ references, however the raw data is not available. Comments from expert scientist: Scientific strengths: The strength is in its historical record of energy use in this country, and the causes behind major shifts in fuel use. Suggestions: None.
Learners can begin to see the increasing importance of energy use by agricultural, industrial and transportation sectors over time, while also tracking the relative contribution of different sources of energy. Different static graphs that can be selected using a radio button can be used in order to make the animation easily understandable. The data would likely be very engaging to students interested in disciplines such as civics and history. Student questions and discussion would be helpful to facilitate critical thinking and analysis.