Mapping Energy History

Mapping Energy History is an ongoing interdisciplinary effort to quantify and visualize the history of energy use in the United States and other countries. The project involves historical research to document the sector-specific evolution of energy use and to inventory the long-lived infrastructure that enables that use. It also involves archiving of data for use by the research community and generation of visualizations to display that data in support of research, policy, and education. The project is strongly interdisciplinary, involving collaborations between physical science, history, digital media, and digital humanities scholarship; it is based at the University of Chicago but with partners at other institutions. One of its goals is to help scholars and the public understand a potential future transition to clean energy in a historical perspective: the United States has undergone multiple sectoral energy transitions in the past.

“As we look to transforming our energy system, one useful guide is our past: the dramatic energy transitions the U.S. and other countries have already experienced. This project maps out the growth of energy infrastructure and changes in energy use in both U.S. and China, to understand the pace and scale of change. Innovative interdisciplinary digital methods combining archival research and machine vision can give us new windows into the past.”

Liz Moyer, Associate Professor, Geophysical Sciences