Category:
Student
Project:
Indeland: Energy Infographics
What was the challenge? “Indeland” is an association of various cities and villages located in a region in Germany with one of the largest lignite surface mines in the world. The region provides energy for itself and a large part of Germany with the mined lignite, while alternative energies from the same region are unable to provide energy for a fraction of the people living there. The lignite-fired plant produces more than 18 000 times the amount of energy than alternative energy producers like wind power plants or solar plants in the same region while using much less space. When comparing produced energy and emissions of the lignite-fired power plant with renewable energy, most people can’t imagine how much of a difference exists in the amount of produced energy and on the other hand how much emission the power plant really produces. People want to change to green energies but most of the time don’t realize that it is not that easy to replace a big lignite-fired power plant with renewable energies. The challenge was to create awareness about the situation and the dimensions of several energy sources and to allow an opinion to form about future perspectives and possibilities. What was the solution? What was the solution? The solution was a room installation consisting of two main graphics focusing on those dimension differences. The first infographic (a 5m long installation) uses the size of the installation and a quantity of little squares to visualize differences of produced energy. It shows a timeline of population development, energy
Contact: name: Mark-Jan Bludau company/organisation: FH Aachen e-mail: markjan.bludau@gmail.com website: http://be.net/markjanbludau
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demand, and energy generation of various energy sources and future predictions/ perspectives. One square represents 0,001 tWh of produced energy. The second graphic tries to make the abstract volume of produced CO2 by the lignite-fired power plant more accessible by comparing it to the annual emissions of all licensed cars of several big German cities combined. What was the effect? The information is easier to grasp for the viewer and also has more of an emotional effect. The viewer needs to step closer to be able to see the small amount of energy produced by renewable energies and in this way the installation leaves the viewer with a bigger impact when he sees the immense mass of produced energy by the power plant in comparison. On the other hand, the second graphic of the installation shows that the price for this amount of energy is very high, by demonstrating that in one year the power plant produces as much CO2 as all of the licensed cars in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Leipzig, Essen, Bonn, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Nuremberg, Bochum, Wiesbaden, Hannover and Aachen together.