What this map shows
This is a map of the world’s electricity-generating fleet: 34,936 grid-scale power plants from the World Resources Institute’s Global Power Plant Database, drawn as circles whose area is proportional to installed capacity and whose colour shows the primary fuel. Together they add up to more than 5,700 gigawatts, the large majority of the world’s generating capacity around 2020.
Zoomed out, the picture is dominated by fossil fuels: the dense dark-grey clusters of coal plants in China, India, Germany, Poland and the US Midwest, and orange gas plants around the Gulf of Mexico, the Persian Gulf and Russia. Blue hydro plants trace mountain ranges and big rivers: the Andes, Alps, Himalaya, Yangtze, Paraná and Columbia. Zoom into Europe or California and the map dissolves into thousands of small yellow solar farms and teal wind farms.
How to use it
- Filter by fuel with the chips; each shows how many plants match. “Renewables” and “Fossil” switch whole groups; alt-click a fuel to isolate it.
- Hide small plants with the minimum-size slider (logarithmic, from 1 MW to 2 GW). At “≥ 1 GW” only about 2,000 giants remain, mostly coal, gas, nuclear and large hydro.
- The stats panel follows your view. Pan to a country or region and it recalculates the number of plants, total capacity and the capacity mix for what is visible, plus the six largest plants in view.
- Search any plant or owner by name, then click a dot for capacity, commissioning year, reported or estimated annual generation, capacity factor and owner.
Capacity is not generation
A 1,000 MW nuclear plant and a 1,000 MW solar farm look the same size here, but over a year the nuclear plant typically produces around 8 TWh and the solar farm 1.5–2.5 TWh, because of their different capacity factors. That is why solar and wind look prominent on capacity maps while still providing a smaller share of electricity than their capacity suggests. For the real energy mix of each country over time, use the Energy Time Machine; to estimate generation from a specific installation, try the solar panel calculator or the wind turbine calculator.
Data notes
Each plant has a location, capacity in MW, primary fuel and, where available, commissioning year, owner and generation. Generation is shown as reported for the latest available year (2013–2019) when national statistics allow plant-level reporting, otherwise as WRI’s modelled estimate for 2017. Fuel categories follow WRI: “Cogeneration” and “Other” cover plants without a clearly identified primary fuel; “Storage” is mostly pumped hydro and batteries. Locations are as precise as the source; a few plants are placed at a town centre.