To compensate for the rather awkward Sankey diagram from NZ in my last post, here is a more colorful, and more recent one from Aotearoa. It shows the energy flows of New Zealand in 2007. The Ministry of Economy published a report “Energy in Brief”, which also contains this Sankey diagram:
The diagram shows the main flows in gross PJ (1 petajoule = 1015 J) and is “to approximate scale”. Flows below 2.5 PJ are neglected.
Energy produced domestically from various sources comes from the left, imports of coal and oil enter in the leftmost column from the bottom and the top. The energy flows pass through transformation and conveyance phases, to be finally shown in the different use sectors. Losses in transformation and conveyance are visualized with downward arrows, while losses in the end use are not considered.
There are some design flaws, especially when you look at the arrow curves. Also the fact that flows are only “to approximate scale” is in my opinion not acceptable [an arrow representing a flow of 3 PJ has the same width as one for 6 PJ, and both are only half the width of the 30 PJ flow]. But the overall impression is much better than in the version 10 years before.
Click here for a larger version of the diagram (PDF).
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