Using Sankey diagrams to map energy flow from primary fuel to end use

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe energy sector is the largest contributor to gross domestic product (GDP), income, employment, and government revenue in both developing and developed nations. But the energy sector has a significant environmental footprint due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Efficient production, conversion, and use of energy resources are key factors for reducing the environmental footprint. Hence it is necessary to understand energy flows from both the supply and the demand sides. Most energy analyses focus on improving energy efficiency broadly without considering the aggregate energy flow. We developed Sankey diagrams that map energy flow for both the demand and supply sides for the province of Alberta, Canada. The diagrams will help policy/decision makers, researchers, and others to understand energy flow from reserves through to final energy end uses for primary and secondary fuels in the five main energy demand sectors in Alberta: residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, and transportation. The Sankey diagrams created for this study show total energy consumption, useful energy, and energy intensities of various end-use devices. The Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP) model is used in this study. The model showed that Alberta's total input energy in the five demand sectors was 189 PJ, 186 PJ, 828.5PJ, 398 PJ, and 50.83 PJ, respectively. On the supply side, the total energy input and output were found to be 644.84 PJ and 239 PJ, respectively. These results, along with the associated energy flows were depicted pictorially using Sankey diagrams. The Sankey diagrams reveal the current efficiencies within various end-use sectors and could help identify options for improving energy efficiency in order to reduce GHG emissions.

Intellectual Structure and Scientific Evolution of Strategic Decision in the Field of Business and Management from 1971 to 2018

“…The Sankey Diagram illustrated the gap between the prolific scholars, and the existing key wording profiles of a given sector or subsector of SD research. This difference of the lines' thickness reflecting the inter-linkages and the inter-dependencies of the keywords, thus served as a basis for further evaluation of the field of research (Subramanyam et al, 2015). Meanwhile, the most cited papers were found to introduce both the emerging theories and perspectives, and this seems to change the direction of the research (Ferreira et al, 2016).…”

“…In the past few years, Sankey Diagrams have been applied in various ways to perform the multi-dimensional analysis that illustrates the flow of energy. It was first used on steam engines, but in recent years, Sankey Diagrams have also been used on modern energy generating systems including power plants and global energy (Lupton & Allwood, 2017;Soundararajan, Ho, & Su, 2014;Subramanyam, Paramshivan, Kumar, & Mondal, 2015). Our study also applied the Sankey Diagram (https://medialab.sciencespo.fr/) to analyse the given datasets, and to visualise the flow of authorship, scientific themes, and journals based on a yearly basis.…”

Exploring scenarios for more sustainable heating: The case of Niš, Serbia

“…The growth rate for the household sector was identified based on historical data. Thus, for single-family houses and multistorey buildings in Ni s, the heating area expansion rate was set at 1.3% per year [59]. Expansion of the heating area in the public sector in Ni s was set as equal to the growth level projected for the public sector in the Republic of Serbia, which is 0.9% [60].…”

Pavian: Interactive analysis of metagenomics data for microbiomics and pathogen identification

“…Pavian's default visualization choice is a Sankey diagram, a type of graph that is often used to map energy flows (e.g. Subramanyam et al, 2015). Pavian uses this diagram to display the flow of reads from the root of the taxonomy to more specific levels.…”