With our feet firmly planted on the ground, it can be challenging to see the global impact of our energy choices. Renewables, an open-source data visualization and narrative created by Ryan Hoffman, tells the story of the global spread of renewable energy resources from 1984 to the present. Readers can use navigation arrows to explore slides showing satellite imagery of the spatial distribution and growth of renewables. Slides in the visualization focus on specific types of renewable energy generation (wind, solar photovoltaic, and solar farms) and regions, with curated notes about what to observe. Renewables is a product of EarthTime, a project launched by the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, in partnership with the World Economic Forum. EarthTime aims to "support positive future decision-making," through narrative animations of satellite imagery showing the Earth's natural and human-driven transformations. In addition to Renewables, users can click on the "Stories" tab along the top of the page to access more curated visualizations around themes including Mining, Pandemics, and Crisis in the Sahel. Readers looking for a deeper dive can use the "Data Library" to build their own visualizations with data from a wide range of sources, such as the U.S. Geological Survey, Google, and GlobalData.
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