I've updated my
"Map of the World"
which shows, country by country, how human power-consumption per unit area
compares with the power-production per unit area of renewables.
I originally published this graph on my blog
in August 2009.
I've made quite a few improvements to it since then, including the representation of country size by point size,
and colour coding of continents in the style of Gapminder.
One interesting thing I figured out while working on this graph is that, while the average power consumption per unit land area of the world is 0.1 W/m2, 78% of the world's population lives in countries where the average power consumption per unit land area of the world is greater than 0.1 W/m2 — much as, in a town with some crowded buses and many empty buses, the average number of passengers per bus may be small, but the vast majority of passengers find themselves on crowded buses.
Please follow this "Map of the World" link to see multiple versions of the graph, and to download high-resolution originals, which everyone is welcome to use.
My "Map of the World" graphs are published this year in two journal papers, which I will blog about shortly.
| David J C MacKay (2013a) Could energy-intensive industries be powered by carbon-free electricity? Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20110560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0560 | This paper also contains detailed information about the power per unit area of wind farms in the UK and USA, and of nuclear power facilities |
| David J C MacKay (2013b) Solar energy in the context of energy use, energy transportation and energy storage. Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20110431. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0431 | This paper also contains detailed information about the power per unit area of solar farms |
