Primary-to-Use World Energy Flows

From the same blog post I used as source in my previous post comes this interesting diagram, originally by Cullen & Allwood 2010.

I have presented several similar Sankey diagrams here on the blog for different countries (see Spain, Italy or Austria or browse the tag ‘energy’)

This is a neatly structured and nicely designed example of a energy flow Sankey diagram that could serve as a role model. Primary energy broken down by energy carrier is on the left. Conversion steps are shown in the second tier, as two alternative breakdowns (direct fuel use/electricity generation and motion/heat/other). The line where these two tiers touch don’t always have direct connections, but the overall arrow magnitide matches. The next tier (passive systems) is broken down into vehicle, factory and building. The final services on the right side distinguishes eight different energy use fields.

Flows are in Exajoules (10E18 joules) and values are for the year 2005.

3 Comments

  1. Jeff says:

    This is very interesting, but what is also key to note is how much energy is wasted. See this for the United States in 2009: http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2011/usenergyuse.jpg

  2. I am interest in the tool used to create the Sankey diagram.

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