Australia’s dirty power stations create bad CARMA

You can know use GoogleMaps to find out where the world’s biggest power stations are located and how energy efficient they are, VentureBeat reports.

A non-profit US think tank called the Center for Global Development has released a service, called Carbon Monitoring for Action (or CARMA), that estimates carbon emissions of power plants and power companies throughout the world and displays the information in visual form on GoogleMaps.

Depressingly, CARMA shows that Australians produce the most carbon dioxide per person in the world, at 11 tonnes, compared to nine tonnes for Americans and two tonnes for Chinese. In absolute terms, the US comes first with 2.79 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, followed by China on 2.66 billion. China also has the singly biggest emitting power plant, the Huaneng Power International Station, which pumps out 292 million tonnes of CO² annually.

CARMA is a visually compelling service based on a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of more than 50,000 power plants and 4000 power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions in the US and about one-quarter of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy. In its first two days online, CARMA received 150,000 visitors from 187 countries, a good indicator of the need for a source of such information.

The data used on the map is compiled from official government reports and information received from power sector analysts and the International Energy Agency.