DATA & METHODOLOGY

Where the numbers come from.

nrgmap is built entirely from public, openly licensed energy datasets. We cross-reference 17 sources into a single registry of 109,882 power plants across 218 countries, 9.13 TW of tracked capacity, and we publish exactly where each number came from.

Sources

01 WRI Global Power Plant Database Worldwide plant registry: capacity, fuel, ownership, coordinates. CC BY 4.0
02 Global Energy Monitor trackers Per-technology global trackers: coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar and more. Rows that carry a TransitionZero id are CC BY-NC 4.0 and stay off the API. CC BY 4.0
03 EIA US plant-level generation and capacity (Forms 860 / 923). US public domain
04 EPA eGRID US generation and emissions by plant. US public domain
05 IAEA PRIS Reactor-by-reactor nuclear status and output. Public data, attributed
06 ENTSO-E Transparency Platform European generation and cross-border flows. Free reuse, attributed
07 FERC eLibrary US regulatory filings and interconnection records. Public record
08 HIFLD US transmission lines (data to June 2021) and pipelines (final release, June 2025). HIFLD Open closed in August 2025; the archived files are served as they were. US public domain
09 TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map Submarine cable routes and landing points; stylized routes, not surveyed positions. Under review
10 CARTO Basemap tiles and style, drawn from OpenStreetMap data. CARTO terms, © OSM
11 ISO/RTO outlines The seven US ISO/RTO regions, approximated by nrgmap from US Census state boundaries. nrgmap, on Census shapes
12 Interconnection outlines The Eastern, Western, Texas, Quebec and Alaska interconnections, approximated by nrgmap from US Census state boundaries. nrgmap, on Census shapes
13 Synchronous area outlines Fifteen synchronous grids outside North America, schematic outlines drawn by nrgmap. nrgmap schematic
14 Climate TRACE Independent emissions estimates. CC BY 4.0
15 DOE GESDB Grid-scale energy storage projects. Public data
16 OpenStreetMap Locations, footprints, site geometry, transmission lines outside the US and substations. © OpenStreetMap contributors. ODbL 1.0
17 Wikidata Cross-source identifiers and canonical names. CC0

How the registry is built

Each source is ingested on its own schedule, then matched against the registry. A plant that appears in several datasets becomes one record: names are reconciled through Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, coordinates are cross-checked between sources, and where figures disagree the more authoritative source for that field wins (regulator filings over aggregates, operator data over estimates). Capacity is normalized to megawatts. Nothing on this site is generated by scraping other websites: every input is a published dataset with a license that permits reuse, and we name all of them above.

What gets a page

The registry tracks 109,882 plants. We deliberately publish reference pages for only 15,102 of them: plants that clear a notability bar of capacity, landmark status or grid significance. The long tail lives in the interactive map, not in thin pages. Country, grid and fuel pages aggregate the full registry.

Attribution & corrections

Upstream licenses (CC BY 4.0, ODbL, CC0 and public-domain publications) are respected and attributed in the footer of every page. If you use nrgmap figures, cite nrgmap.com and the underlying source. Spotted an error? Use the contact form and include the plant page URL; corrections ship with the next data refresh. The full licence register, one row per map layer, is at app.nrgmap.com/about/data-licenses.