Main project

A model of the world energy system

86,622 nodes and 197,068 weighted links.

Open the atlas About the atlas How it works
Overview chart of the world energy model

The model at a glance: what it contains, how it is weighted, and how it behaves. All figures.


Energy

Techno-economics

Industrial heat electrification break-even

Break-even electricity price as a function of the gas price. The line is the locus where the two routes cost the same; below it the electric boiler wins.

Cost of heat from an electric boiler against a gas boiler in Texas. The gap between the fuel prices decides the outcome. Break-even electricity is about 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour at $3.50 gas, and capital cost moves it very little.

Optimisation

Battery revenue simulator

Revenue against storage duration. The curve bends at about four hours.

Linear program over 8,760 hours. Value flattens above four hours of storage duration, which is the expected result, now measured.


Climate research

Life-cycle · interactive

The true climate cost

A tomato traced four supply-chain stages deep, from field-grown cultivation back through fertiliser, ammonia synthesis and natural gas extraction, with the CO2e and allocation factor on every edge.

Twenty products taken apart stage by stage, with the allocation on every edge and the lifetime of every vehicle exposed rather than buried. Change the route and it recomputes instead of looking up an answer somebody prepared.


Other work

Sonification · interactive

Skylines, played

A city skyline drawn as a frequency spectrum, building heights standing in for the bars of an analyser.

A skyline and a spectrum analyser are the same picture, so the picture is played. Twenty-seven cities built from real building heights and coordinates; turn on the spot and the sound turns with you. What is measured, what is assumed and what is invented are each labelled.

Allometry · interactive

Longevity quotient

Species ranked by longevity quotient, from the twelve furthest below prediction to the eighteen furthest above.

How long an animal lives, against how long an animal of its size should live. Body mass predicts lifespan across fourteen orders of magnitude; the quotient is what is left once that relationship is divided out.

Desktop · interactive

The bookshelf

A desktop wallpaper of drawn book spines, built from a Goodreads export.

A wallpaper built from a Goodreads export: your books as drawn spines, or as a wall of their real covers brought to one finish. The CSV is parsed in the browser and never leaves it.


Built with Python, Julia and public data. All source is downloadable.