Challenges in Adopting Sustainable Energy Pathways
Governments (at national, state, regional and local levels) and private industry face challenges when planning, investing, and monitoring their progress towards a more sustainable energy future.- Energy information is often unavailable, difficult to access, and expensive to measure
- Methods for reporting data differ by organization, government and location, making meaningful comparison difficult, whether at a local or global level
- Energy planning and decision support tools are often complex, do not scale and tend to focus on a single energy topic, making it difficult to achieve integrated ‘systems thinking’ across all energy sectors
Free Energy Database (FRED) Overview
In partnership with the US Department of Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, The Climate Group and Otherlab, we have built an energy data and planning platform called Free Energy Data (FRED). FRED is an on-line, cloud-based system that helps governments and private industry set goals, compare and monitor their progress towards a more sustainable energy future, while making energy information more accessible, transparent and consistent across organizations. FRED’s primary data is drawn from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System and Annual Energy Outlook, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory efficiency data, and the Solar Energy Industries Association. We are working with additional sources and agencies to add additional datasets to make FRED an international decision-making platform.
- Collect and display energy information from recognized scientific reporting agencies
- Normalize and merge data from various sources to make consistent and comparable
- Allows users to upload, store and view their own energy data
- Intuitive maps, graphs, and statistics to display data
- Side-by-side comparisons of users’ and scientific published data
- Interactive sankey diagrams showing energy flows across all fuel types and demand sectors
- Planning tool for users to compare forecasts of future energy scenarios and outcomes
- In future, FRED will allow user community to share and exchange energy data between organizations and locations (or keep to themselves if desired)