Which US states have the cleanest electricity? [Interactive slide deck]
How does each state generate its electricity? Which states have the cleanest or dirtiest mix?
We often compare electricity generation between countries.
But as the US – the world’s second-largest carbon emitter – tries to decarbonise, understanding differences at the state level is important.
To make this easier, I’ve built a small interactive slide deck on state-by-state electricity sources, and the carbon intensity of the electricity mix. This lets us see which states have the cleanest power, and how this is changing over time.
The underlying data comes from Ember Climate, an organisation that does invaluable work.
I have built it for free, and provide it as a public good. Feel free to reuse it (or parts of it). No need to ask for permission.
[Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t allow chart or slide deck embeds, so you can find it by clicking the button below, or click here].
Great work! Would it be possible to add "nuclear" to the "Share of electricity by source across US states" map on slide 4?
Hannah,
This is good stuff. I appreciate the link to Ember.
A couple months ago, Harry Stevens at the Washington Post had tried to do something similar but he had grabbed the wrong dataset from the EIA, the US Energy Information Administration, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/clean-energy-electricity-sources/?itid=ap_harrystevens .
I pointed this out to him via email and he acknowledged that he had mistakenly used data for total emissions vs the electric power sector. He promised to issue a correction but I never saw it.
It appears that Ember gets their data from the IEA. Based on my research and data available at the EIA, https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/ , the numbers differ slightly from those presented here, for NM where I live, carbon intensity numbers for 2001 are 944 vs 765 and 489 vs 434 for 2021.
I'm not sure why the difference???
Just FYI and Thanks,
Dean