6. Does the amount of electricity generated influence GHG emissions?

Open a new worksheet, and notice the new Dimensions and Measures from the added data.

We’ll need to graph the reported CO2e emissions vs Net Generation for each facility. (It would be better to use the powerplant name from EIA rather than the EPA facility name.) Some power plants have multiple generators listed under the same plant ID and name. So, we might want to use AVG on the measures rather than SUM.

It looks like there’s two distinct trends within the data. Let’s add fuel types and see if we get a clearer picture. Drag AER Fuel Type Code onto color.

For reference, these are the type codes.

Let’s exclude everything except Coal, Natural Gas, and Distillate Petroleum by filtering on fuel type. These are the three main fossil fuel power plant types.

So in general, natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal.

6.1. Add trend lines.

We can add trend lines to this chart by clicking Analysis -> Trend Lines -> Show Trend Lines. Note that hovering over the trend line gives a lot of statistical information.

Cool. But why is there a lot of variation between power plants with similar electricity outputs? Could plant efficiency have something to do with it? Onto the next section.

SUBPAGES (10): 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CREATING 2-D GRAPHS 3. 3-D GRAPHS AND MORE! 4. MAPS 5. MERGE IN EIA POWER PLANT DATA 6. DOES THE AMOUNT OF ELECTRICITY GENERATED INFLUENCE GHG EMISSIONS? 7. CALCULATED FIELDS 7. CALCULATED FIELDS 8. TRI DATASET & TABLE CALCULATIONS 9. DASHBOARDS