Energy Atlas

How The World Is Powered
Atlas

Atlas Trails

A trail is a short, ordered route through the atlas. Each stop says why it comes next, so a journey reads as an argument rather than a list. Start one, leave, and come back: your place is kept in this browser, and you do not need an account for that.

One Day on the Grid

Follow one day of electricity in seven stops: the machine that spans a continent, the evening hours that stress it, the duck-shaped dent solar has put in its day, and the stores, turbines and willing customers that...

7 stops

From Faraday's Coil to the Turbine Hall

Electricity generation is one lineage, not many separate inventions. This trail follows the principle Michael Faraday demonstrated in 1831 through the generator it made possible, the steam turbine that came to spin most...

6 stops

Chain Reaction: A History of Nuclear Power

Nuclear power began as physics before it became infrastructure, and the path since has run through triumph, catastrophe and a slow attempt to build again. This trail follows that history from the science that made a...

9 stops

Policy Tools of the Energy Transition

The shift away from fossil fuels has never run on technology alone. Laws, contracts and standards decided which power plants got built, who paid for them, and who bore the cost when they were built and then not needed...

7 stops

Trails are curated by the atlas. Where you have got to in one is remembered by your own browser and is never sent to us.