David MacKay's Map of the World

Showing countries' power consumptions, population densities, and areas;
and comparing power consumptions per unit area with the power production per unit area of various renewables

You are welcome to use these figures under the same terms as SEWTHA [That is, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.]; high-resolution originals are provided below, for many variants. If you are going to print out these figures, please use the high resolution versions — paper has higher resolution than a screen, so images that look adequately sharp on-screen often look like mush when printed.
When you use these figures, please cite the source in one of the following ways:
either: Figure by David J C MacKay www.withouthotair.com    
or: from David J C MacKay (2013) Solar energy in the context of energy use, energy transportation and energy storage. Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20110431. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0431
or: from David J C MacKay (2013) Could energy-intensive industries be powered by carbon-free electricity? Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20110560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0560
 
History of this diagram
PPPersonVsPDen2WA.eps

more versions below...

LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenLWAnt.eps
- versions showing more detail and more country names
- versions showing history
- simpler versions with less detail
- sequences for use in presentations
- old versions of these figures
www.withouthotair.com

Download lots of different versions here

The main "countries-only" figure, with power-per-area contours "no vectors"
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenLWAnt.eps
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Suggested caption: Power consumption per person versus population density, in 2005. Point size is proportional to land area (except for areas less than 38 000 km2 (e.g. Belgium), which are shown by a fixed smallest point size to ensure visibility). Both axes are logarithmic. The straight lines with slope -1 are contours of equal power consumption per unit area. Seventy-eight per cent of the world's population live in countries that have a power consumption per unit area greater than 0.1 W/m2. (Average powers per unit area are sometimes measured in other units, for example kWh per year per square metre; for the reader who prefers those units, the following equivalence may be useful: 1 W = 8.766 kWh per year.)
The same "countries-only" figure, with vectors showing 15 years of "progress" for Australia, Libya, the United States, Sudan, Brazil, Portugal, China, India, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and S. Korea. Also includes little arrows to indicate a few small countries that fall off the edge of the diagram.
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenLWA.eps
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Suggested caption: Power consumption per person versus population density, in 2005. Point size is proportional to land area. Line segments show 15 years of `progress' (from 1990 to 2005) for Australia, Libya, the USA, Sudan, Brazil, Portugal, China, India, Bangladesh, the UK and the Republic of Korea. Seventy-eight per cent of the world's population live in countries that have a power consumption per unit area greater than 0.1 W/m2.
The main figure with countries and renewable contours
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA.eps
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Suggested caption: Power consumption per person versus population density, in 2005. Point size is proportional to land area. The diagonal lines are contours of power consumption per unit area. The grey box corresponds to the region shown in the previous figures.

Supplementary figures - historical views

Graphs showing 200 or 400 years' "progress" for various regions.
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenHISTORYEW.eps
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Suggested caption: Power consumption per person versus population density, from 1600 or 1800 to 2005. OECD = Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Data sources: Grubler, Arnulf (2008), "Energy transitions." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland. Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment, and E. A. Wrigley (2010), Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press.
Version showing the main "all-countries" data with "England and Wales" superposed.
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEWWA.eps
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Supplementary figures - versions with some details removed

This is a favourite of mine - Has contours and vectors but Fewer country labels, and no arrows to indicate the tiny countries off the edges
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenWA.eps
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Version of "all-countries" plot with no power-per-unit-area countours
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenAll0WA.eps
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Version of "all-countries" plot with no power-per-unit-area countours and fewer country labels
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenAllOWA.eps
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Supplementary figures - versions for use in sequences

Sequence 1: Build up the world incrementally, continent by continent

UK alone
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenUKWA.eps
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EU
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEUWA.eps
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plus Asia
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEUASWA.eps
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plus Middle East and North Africa
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEUASMEWA.eps
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plus Sub-Saharan Africa
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEUASMEAFWA.eps
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plus South America
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEUASMEAFSAWA.eps
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Plus Central America
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenCAWA.eps
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Plus North America
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenNAWA.eps
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Plus Oceania
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenOCWA.eps
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Sequence 2: For animation between the all-countries view and the countries-plus-renewables view and Sequential introduction of the renewable contours

For animation between the all-countries view and the countries-plus-renewables view
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenWA.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA0X.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA0Y.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA0Z.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA0.eps
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Sequential introduction of the renewable contours
LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA0.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA1.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA2.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA.eps
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Old versions of the figures, including versions featuring US states

LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenEW.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenL.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenCaltech.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen2USA.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen3LUSA.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDen3USA.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenLUSA.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsPDenUSA.eps
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LoRes/PPPersonVsFluxDen.eps
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History of this diagram

I first published this graph on my blog in 2009 [A new graph, showing countries' power per unit area] and in an article in the New York Times [Illuminating the Future of Energy] and in the International Herald Tribune.

From 2009 to 2013 I used it in talks around the world, and occasionally improved it, in particular by including land areas. In 2012 I used these graphs in my TEDx talk at Warwick (see below). In 2013 I published the diagram in two papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, and I wrote a fresh blog post. The journal slightly modified my diagrams, re-setting the axis labels, rewriting my units, and changing some of the fonts. The versions on this webpage are my own versions, which I prefer.

David J C MacKay (2013a) Could energy-intensive industries be powered by carbon-free electricity? Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20110560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0560 contains one of the figures, namely:
PPPersonVsPDenLwant.eps
This paper also contains detailed information about the power per unit area of wind farms in the UK and USA, and of nuclear power facilities
David J C MacKay (2013b) Solar energy in the context of energy use, energy transportation and energy storage. Phil Trans R Soc A 371: 20110431. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0431 contains four of the figures, namely:
PPPersonVsPDenLwant.eps
PPPersonVsPDenwa.eps
PPPersonVsPDenHISTORYEW.eps
PPPersonVsPDen2wa.eps
This paper also contains detailed information about the power per unit area of solar farms

People, Power, Area - How the Laws of Physics Constrain Our Sustainable Energy Options

TEDx Warwick 2012 (18 minutes). This talk is also available from ted.com with the title David MacKay: A reality check on renewables The slides are here: [html]

TED David MacKay