---
# System prepended metadata

title: ElectricityMap - The Product Vision

---

---
type: article
title: ElectricityMap - The Product Vision
date: 2021-03-08
draft: true
---

# ElectricityMap

According to US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2020 was Earth's 2nd hottest year ever recorded, just behind 2016. It was also Earh's 44th year with global land and ocean temperatures, at least nominally, above 20th century average [^nooa1]. A major cause of the global warming has been the greenhouse effect, where human activities (particularly burning fossil fuels to generate energy) are increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases [^ausgov]. Since the Paris Agreement, many countries has planned clean energyinitiatives in the near future [^rivm][^china][^eu]. However, still more than 50% of the world electricity are generated by burning fossil fuels [^energybalance]. 

Besides the involvement of governments and energy suppliers, the role of individuals can also have an influence on this problem. The current states and progresses are often missed or ignored by the general public. People do not realize how "clean" their electricity is and where it comes from. With this in mind, ElectricityMap is created: an interactive visualization tools that shows how a country generates and consumes electricity.

## What is ElectricityMap?
ElectricityMap is a visualization of electricity consumption and production in the world. The project tries to track live energy consumption/production. Based on these data, the carbon footprint of each region is calculated. Furthermore, it dissects the 24h-live energy data into specific categories (for example nuclear, biomass, wind, solar, etc.) and records electricity import/export if possible. Currently, their data cover around 110 regions shown on the world map. The project can be view in on their [website](https://www.electricitymap.org/) or can be downloaded as an android [app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tmrow.electricitymap).


The project is currently open-sourced on [GitHub](https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib) and is being maintained employees of Tomorrow Co any by a community of developers. The goal of this developer team is to raise awareness on the global electricity consumption/production and help people to understand/reduce their carbon footprint.Below, you can read more about ElectricityMap’s domain concepts, stakeholders, quality attributes, and roadmap.


## ElectricityMap System

### System’s key capabilities
ElectricityMap provides the interactive visualization of electricity use across the globe. It is an open-source platform that can be accessed by anyone from students to world leaders. It helps people to understand the climate impact of global electricity use more easily.[^ElecMapOpenSrc] The visualization itself is built with [d3.js](https://d3js.org/) and [mapbox GL](https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/). The users can view the global usage from the map, to access the details of each area, the user can either type in the area name on the top left search box, or the user can manually click on the specific area on the map. It will provide the users the detailed information such as electricity production/consumption by different sources, carbon intensity in the last 24 hours, electricity prices in the last 24 hours, etc.

### System Use Cases

The ElectrictyMap system has different capabilities. The employees of Tomorrow Co are the people who are in charge of maintaining and developing most features for ElectricityMap. Then there are the community users who view the project and can get a deeper understanding of carbon footprint with the help of Electricity map, they also report bugs or suggest new ideas for the development of the project to the contributors. However, some people also want to contribute to the project, then they join the group of contributors, but since they are not the employee of the Tomorrow Co, they are considered as the open-source developers of the project, they usually work on smaller issues and their contribution will reviewed by the employees of Tomorrow Co then added to the project.

![](https://i.imgur.com/maPENsG.png)





<!-- ## Mental Model of the User

A user's mental model is a conceptualization each user has built about how a particular system works (CITATION). In the context of ElectricityMap, the visualization should be understandable without specific domain knowledge in geosciences or data engineering. 


### Worldmap

### (Individual) Area Information

### Other features

Beside the main functionalities of the map, some other smaller features are also implemented into the website.

- ElectricityMap is currently available in 22 languages, the user can select the language according to their preferences.
- There is a colorblind mode and a dark mode for this website. 
- Users can add solar and/or wind overlay on the map. 

### Mobile version -->




## Underlying System
<!-- Mention somethings about D3.js／React／poetry/parsers/kibana etc. -->

## Stakeholders
According to Rozanski and Woods[^RaW], "A stakeholder in the architecture of a system is an individual, team, organisation, or classes thereof, having an interest in the realisation of the system." An open source project (such as ElectricityMap) may not always adhere to such clear cut definitions of a stakeholder, unlike more traditional corporations. That being said, it does have some associated with it. 

The following is a list of major stakeholder areas (relevant to our use case) taken from "Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development" by Jim Coplien and Gertrud Bjørnvig[^LeanArchitecture]

**The developers** - Being an open source project, ElectricityMap has hundreds of contributors (i.e., developers) listed on GitHub. Some of the more notable ones include Olivier Corradi, founder of Tomorrow and Trevor Hinkle, head of the ElectricityMap project.

**The business** - Tomorrow is a startup founded in Copenhagen, Denmark and is the parent company of ElectricityMap. The project was started by the founder Olivier Corradi and is currently spearheaded by Trevor Hinkle. This of course makes Tomorrow the key corporate stakeholder of ElectricityMap. Additionally, the GitHub page also lists dependencies on open source projects spearheaded by corporations such as React Native by Facebook[^Facebook], serialize-javascript by Yahoo![^Yahoo], and javascript by AirBnb[^AirBnb], making them stakeholders as well. 

**The customers** - In the case of ElectricityMap, the customers aren't those who pay for it, since it is freely available to use for anyone who wants to do so. Rather, "customers" in this context would refer to those who use the information generated by this project to make more conscious decisions to lower their carbon footprint. This includes both people and corporations. 


## Roadmap
ElectricityMap is created by Tomorrow, a Danish company that aims to "power [the transition to a low-carbon future] by getting the world to understand and reduce their carbon footprint."[^Tomorrow] Although the project itself does not have a roadmap, it is indirectly stated that their goal is to obtain as much current and historical data regarding CO2 emissions in as many countries as they possibly can. In their blog[^TomBlog], Tomorrow claims a need for a platform that allows "all organizations [to] get their carbon footprint calculated automatically at an approachable cost." They continue to posit the thesis that competition in the marketplace for reducing carbon footprints would be driven largely by customer sentiment and tax incentives make sustainable activities more profitable. 

A platform that quantifies environmental externalities, they argue, serves a common good while also providing regulators with high-quality information. The closest discernable thing to a roadmap are the following three points, which Tomorrow argues are necessities for such a transformation to occur (taken from their blog[^TomBlog]):

1. **Automation:** Use already existing databases, data structures, and data pipelines to further automate the footprint assessment process. 
2. **Actionability:** Focus on real-time, granular insights into activities and emissions, providing users with high-quality, actionable data instead of vague, categorical datafeeds that do little more that provide a high-level overview.
3. **Openness:** Enhance transparency in the climate modelling world by providing open-source solutions that create trust and community, while also providing others with reliable software to further the common good.


## Ethical Considerations
The ethical considerations of the platform are plainly visible, as Tomorrow aims to inform and transform the world by providing high-quality data about carbon footprints, and tools to combat and minimize such footprints. Not only do they encourage companies to evaluate their own footprints, they also are developing a product called Bloom that allows individuals to calculate their footprints[^Bloom]. 

With respect to user privacy, Tomorrow also emphasizes user privacy by preventing the data from leaving the user device or server by performing the computations locally[^TomYT]. While good for user privacy, a major implication of this is the energy consumed by performing local computations could have microscopic environmental impacts, particularly if the device is battery-powered (leads to faster wear on the battery over time). On the other hand, if the device is not battery-powered, it still has ethical implications if these machines performing local computations are powered by non-renewable energy - meaning they're attempting to fight climate change using polluting energy sources. Some advanced machine learning models consume enormous amounts of energy, which leads to further pollution should the machines not be powered renewably. 






## References
[^nooa1]: NOOA. news. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2021, from https://www.noaa.gov/news/2020-was-earth-s-2nd-hottest-year-just-behind-2016#:~:text=2020%20as%20ranked%20by%20other,sharing%20the%20first%2Dplace%20spot.

[^energybalance]: World Energy Balances: Overview. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2021, from https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-balances-overview

[^ausgov]: Australian DAWE. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2021, from https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science-data/climate-science/greenhouse-effect#:~:text=The%20greenhouse%20effect%20is%20a,re%2Dradiated%20by%20greenhouse%20gases.&text=The%20absorbed%20energy%20warms%20the%20atmosphere%20and%20the%20surface%20of%20the%20Earth.

[^rivm]: Dutch RIVM. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2021, from https://www.rivm.nl/onderwerpen/energietransitie

[^china]: Chinese Goverment news. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2021, from http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2018-11/27/content_5343609.htm?_zbs_baidu_bk

[^eu]: EU action. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2021, from https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiations/paris_en

[^Tomorrow]: Tomorrow. Retrieved 3 Mar, 2021, from https://www.tmrow.com/

[^TomYT]: Opening Keynote RSC 2019. Retrieved 3 Mar, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR3K4CokeHA

[^TomBlog]: Scalable Climate Change Solutions. Retrieved 3 Mar, 2021, from https://www.tmrow.com/blog/scalable-solutions-to-climate-change/

[^RaW]: Stakeholders, from [Software Systems Architecture by Nick Rozanski and Eoin Woods](https://www.viewpoints-and-perspectives.info/home/stakeholders/)

[^ElecMapOpenSrc]: ElectricityMap OpenSource Retrieved 3 Mar, 2021 https://api.electricitymap.org/open-source/

[^Bloom]: Bloom. Retrieved 3 Mar, 2021, from https://bloomclimate.com/

[^LeanArchitecture]: [Stakeholder Engagement](http://www.leansoftwarearchitecture.com/home/engaging-the-stakeholders), from "Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development" by Jim Coplien and Gertrud Bjørnvig

[^Yahoo]: [Yahoo! Serialize JavaScript on GitHub](https://github.com/yahoo/serialize-javascript)

[^Facebook]: [Facebook React on GitHub](https://github.com/facebook/react)

[^AirBnb]: [AirBnb JavaScript on GitHub](https://github.com/airbnb/javascript)
