November 13, 2019

This Map Shows 29,000 of the World’s Power Plants

Electricity allows people to read after dark, lets fridges keep food fresh and ensures vaccines are kept cold and safe to use. Access to affordable, reliable electricity is fundamental to living a healthy life, but it’s also the largest source of climate-warming emissions. That’s why it’s important that researchers and decision-makers know, among other things, where power plants are and how much power they generate.

Despite the importance of this information, there hasn’t been an open-access database of the world’s power plants until recently. The Global Power Plant Database, developed by World Resources Institute (WRI) and partners, fills this gap by collecting data on thousands of power plants around the world. Released in April 2018, it is the most comprehensive, freely available database of the world’s power plants. We recently updated the database and now show 29,910 power plants in the map below. The database contains all fuel types, from conventional coal and gas to renewables such as wind and solar, which you can see in the colors below. You can also click on different power plants to see their capacity and estimated power generation in 2017; for some plants, more information is available, such as commissioning year and ownership.

The power plant database was developed by leveraging information from over 600 sources, including official government data from several countries around the world.

We estimate that the database covers about 85% of the world’s total installed power capacity. Coverage differs by fuel type, and there’s more information available on the operating capacities of nuclear, coal, hydropower and geothermal plants than those of solar, wind and biomass plants.

Of the plants in the database, 36% of the capacity is coal, 26% natural gas, 19% hydropower, 7% nuclear and 5% oil. Whereas wind, solar and biomass facilities represent 4%, 1%, and 0.6% of the power capacity in the database, respectively.

Combining this data with information on demographics, social and productive uses of electricity and energy resource availability, WRI recently launched Energy Access Explorer, which visualizes the state of energy access across unserved and underserved regions to help accelerate efforts to extend affordable, reliable power to all. Data is also helping governments and NGOs in developing countries get information on potential renewable energy investments with the Renewable Energy Data Explorer developed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

WRI has recently partnered with two other non-profits, WattTime and Carbon Tracker, on an exciting research project using satellite imagery to estimate the emissions associated with each power plant within the database.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded a grant to WRI, Duke, NREL and others to expand upon this research and connect different sources of energy information in a new public platform called the Global Energy Data Commons.

Making this kind of information available is essential to tracking progress in human development and sustainability.

You can overlay power plants with data on water stress, sea level rise or air pollution. The map below shows satellite data of nitrogen dioxide concentrations from the European Space Agency, overlaid with coal power plants. Nitrogen dioxide is an air pollutant that can harm lung function and worsen asthma. It is formed mainly from the burning of fossil fuels from powerplants, gasoline-burning vehicles and agricultural fires.

Explore more open data on energy and climate on Resource Watch topic pages.