The visualization is an animated and visually-rich way of portraying times series data on Canada’s energy history, obtained from the World Bank Group. Electricity production is expressed in terawatt-hours (TWh), where a terawatt refers to a trillion watts. Consumption is displayed in terms of per capita, meaning it shows the amount consumed in Canada for every person in the country, and is expressed in megawatt-hours (MWh) per capita (a megawatt being a million watts).
Each ‘scene’ is based on data averaged for the three years around the decade of interest (e.g., the 1980 scene portrays data averaged for 1979, 1980 and 1981). Exceptions to this include:
- Non-hydroelectric renewable energy sources (e.g., wind, solar) emerging in the mid-1970s is shown in the 1970 scene, but calculated through an average of 1974, 1975 and 1976 data.
- Nuclear energy emerging in the mid-1960s is shown in the 1960 scene, but calculated through an average of 1964, 1965 and 1966 data.
The graphics depicting energy operations have elements that are scaled according to the degree in which they increase or decrease from decade-to-decade; for example, the amount of coal cars increase with coal-based production, water levels increase with hydroelectric production, flame increases with oil-based production, etc. Similarly, the fume clouds from the house are scaled to represent increases / decreases in per capita energy expenditure. The number of people decrease in the household as per capita consumption increases to represent how (in the case of per capita increases) a greater level of electricity is required / consumed for every individual in the country.
The final question we have to ask ourselves, is how sustainable is this picture?
