CSR Data: Visualizing Comparisons of Carbon Footprints

If you like my CSR posts about data visualizations depicting the impact of the BP oil spill, you may be interested in another discovery that came across my laptop thanks to Infosthetics.com.  This one concentrates on country-level comparisons of carbon footprints, and is among the best free data websites I have seen.

Based in Florida, the website C02 Scorecard aspires to "become the leading destination for online greenhouse gas and energy efficiency data, analysis and news."  Types of information displayed on the website include C02 footprint, trend, and intensity data, as well as more specific information about energy and electricity production broken down by fuel type (e.g. solid, liquid, renewable, etc).  The website offers multiple mechanisms for manipulating and digesting extensive data, including a dashboard for viewing information specific to a single country, a tool for comparing C02 emissions information for any two countries of your choosing, interactive maps for viewing comparative information based on a variety of parameters, and treemaps for analyzing the relative impact of all countries.

Here are some examples of analyses you can perform using C02 Scorecard:

Footprints: Visit the Country Data Dashboard to see how your own country (or any other of interest to you) is rated.  My country, for example, can be proud that its "annual C02 footprint and C02 intensity have both declined compared to the previous year" but should be ashamed that its C02 emissions per 2005 PPP GDP are moderately high and even more ashamed that its annual C02 footprint is amont the highest in the world.

Winners and losers: Visit the Treemap function to learn that Finland and Turkmenistan (yes, Turkmenistan!) are leading the way in reducing emissions, and that Peru and the UAE stand at the opposite extreme.

Disproportionate Emissions: Visit the XY chart to pit two factors against each other.  Based on C02 scorecards comparison of GDP per capita versus C02 per capita, it is interesting to observe that Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Trinidad and Tobago seem to have disproportionately high C02 emissions compared with GDP, whereas Chad and Macao stand out for doing particularly well by this measure.

Energy Types: Visit the Country Data Map section to investigate who uses the largest amount of renewable energy as a percentage of total energy consumption.  Iceland and Norway may not be total surprises as clear leaders, but Lesotho might be a country that you hadn't considered.  And would you be surprised to learn that Botswana, Mongolia, Poland, and South Africa have the highest percentage of electricity consumption from coal sources of all the countries?

This is only the tip of the (melting) iceberg, so try C02 Scorecard yourself and report back on how you like this CSR tool.

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