Energy Atlas

How The World Is Powered

Energy Atlas

Disputed Statements

Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.

14 statements marked Debated.

Aswan High Dam, Commissioned Year1968

Aswan High Dam, Power Stations and Infrastructure

Standing

Concerns Commissioned Year

Currently States 1968

The cited engineering profile dates construction 1960 to 1968; many references instead give completion as 1970 and the formal dedication as January 1971. What counts as completion is the open question recorded for this entry.

Source Power Technology

Concentrated Solar Power, Invented Year1866

Concentrated Solar Power, Technologies

Standing

Concerns Invented Year

Currently States 1866

Auguste Mouchout demonstrated the first solar steam engine using a parabolic trough in 1866; the first large commercial CSP plant, the 354 MW SEGS complex in California, began operating in 1984.

Source Wikipedia

Demand Response, Formulated Year2011

Demand Response, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 2011

Utility demand-side management and interruptible-load programs predate formal terminology by decades; the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's 2011 definition is the widely cited formal standard.

Source Wikipedia

Energy Access, Formulated Year2011

Energy Access, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 2011

Energy access as a development concept has no single coiner and was discussed in development economics literature for decades before the term was formalized as a tracked global metric. The UN Secretary-General's Sustainable Energy for All initiative, launched in 2011 and later folded into Sustainable Development Goal 7's 2030 universal-access target, is the widely cited turning point that made energy access a named global policy goal.

Source Wikipedia

Energy Return on Investment, Formulated Year1984

Energy Return on Investment, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 1984

Net-energy analysis debates trace to the 1970s; Charles A. S. Hall's 1984 paper on the cover of the journal Science is the widely cited landmark that popularized EROI as a named metric.

Source Wikipedia

Energy Security, Formulated Year1973

Energy Security, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 1973

Energy security has no single coiner; the 1973 oil crisis and OPEC embargo are the widely cited turning point that made it a central policy concern, with formal government treatments such as the 1987 US Energy Security report to the President following later.

Source Wikipedia

Feed-in Tariff, Formulated Year1978

Feed-in Tariff, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 1978

The US Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, signed in 1978, functioned as the first feed-in-tariff-like mechanism under another name; the first law formally named a feed-in tariff was Germany's 1990 Stromeinspeisungsgesetz (StrEG), so which year counts as the concept's true founding is a genuine naming dispute, not a settled date.

Source Wikipedia

Flywheel Energy Storage, Invented Year2011

Flywheel Energy Storage, Technologies

Standing

Concerns Invented Year

Currently States 2011

Flywheels have stored mechanical energy for millennia; the first grid-scale flywheel energy storage plant, Beacon Power's facility in Stephentown, New York, opened in 2011.

Source Wikipedia

Gas Turbine, Invented Year1791

Gas Turbine, Technologies

Standing

Concerns Invented Year

Currently States 1791

John Barber patented the first complete gas turbine design in 1791; the first turbine producing net power was built by Aegidius Elling in 1903.

Source Wikipedia

Grid Parity, Formulated Year2011

Grid Parity, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 2011

The term's exact coinage date is not established; 2011 marks Germany's widely cited first achievement of utility-scale solar grid parity, the earliest clean date found in the research for this entity.

Source Wikipedia

Heat Pump, Invented Year1855

Heat Pump, Technologies

Standing

Concerns Invented Year

Currently States 1855

Lord Kelvin described the underlying theory in 1852; Peter von Rittinger built the first working heat pump in 1855 to 1857.

Source Wikipedia

Peat, Source ClassFossil fuel

Peat, Energy Sources

Standing

Concerns Source Class

Currently States Fossil fuel

Peat renews, but far more slowly than it is burned, so classifications differ on whether to group it with fossil fuels or with biomass. The International Peatland Society reports its use for energy being phased out in Ireland and Finland.

Source International Peatland Society

Renewable Energy Certificate, Formulated Year2001

Renewable Energy Certificate, Concepts

Standing

Concerns Formulated Year

Currently States 2001

Earlier European green-certificate trading schemes existed in the 1990s; the Texas REC Program is the earliest comprehensively documented US tracking system.

Source Wikipedia

Small Modular Reactor, Invented Year1950

Small Modular Reactor, Technologies

Standing

Concerns Invented Year

Currently States 1950

Modular reactor concepts date to the 1950s; the term small modular reactor entered common use in the late 1970s per the American Nuclear Society and was revived in wider policy use after a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Source Wikipedia