All of the world’s power plants, in one handy map - all in one solar street light

Today, about 62,500 power plants are operating around the world.
Including everything from coal.
Fired at a hydropower dam in a wind farm.
But where are these plants?
Who uses what?
This beautiful map in the recent GE report provides a great visualization: Here are a few footnotes and warnings :-
This map provides a great way to visualize where different types of power plants are, but it doesn't necessarily show how important each power supply is.
The map correctly shows, for example, that rural Germany is now covered by solar and wind fields.
But Germany still receives less electricity from renewable sources (
About 25%)
More than coal or even natural gas. —
To better understand the importance of different sources of energy, take a look at this interactive chart from nature, which shows who consumes what.
The data there matches some aspects of this map (
Brazil is really dependent on water and electricity).
But, as natural data show, coal is still much more important for countries like the US and China than shown above. —
Africa stands out on the map.
About 0. 55 billion people on the continent still do not have access to electricity, and the continent remains heavily dependent on hydropower and fuel-fired power plants (
Many of them were built up in the frenzy of a decade ago, when the price of crude oil was much lower and looked very cost-effective).
A big question is whether Africa will be more dependent on coal or looking for renewable energy as it grows further.
For more information on this, see this report (pdf). —
By the way, this map was randomly drawn from GE's interesting report on "industrial internet.
"The basic argument is that the Internet will increase global productivity by manufacturing many industrial processes, something that has not been done so far --
Including energymore efficient.
You can find a brief summary of the marco Annunziata report here.