Energy Justice Community Map Blog

It is amazing to look at Texas in Google Earth or another satellite mapping program. Parts of Texas are covered in oil and gas wells. Texas has over 100,000 wells.

This is what the map looks by Sonora, Texas.

The white specks are all wells.

I entered our Energy Justice Communites Maps as a submission to "Apps for the Environment".

You can Vote for Us and help us promote our cause!

Energy Justice will be participating in the Shale Gas Outrage protest on Sept 7 and the one-day conference on Sept 8.

We will be giving a workshop (from 10:45-12) and tabling. Drop by and say hello!

Our workshop:
Mapping and Fighting Demand for Natural Gas: Power Plants and LNG Exports
Mike Ewall, Aaron Kreider & Amy Wilson

I just did a short introduction video to our EJ Communites Map website.

Watch the Video

I'm happy to announce a redesign of the facility layers system which makes it faster and easier to use.

This affects the National Map, Community Map, State Map, and Global Map.

The Vulcan Project has done extensive research into US CO2 emissions. They've broken down the US into small grid squares (10 km by 10 km) and estimated *hourly* emissions for an entire year (2002)!

Now that data set is crazy huge (5 GB)! Fortunately, they've released the results for the entire year by county.

We have converted this data into KML layers which you can download and add to your own maps.

You can also add the layers to our maps, like this one of Total CO2 emissions per capita:

The amount of CO2 generated varies a lot by county as large sources of it (like power plants) will give a county with few people a very high CO2 score. It is interesting how much CO2 per capita is produced in the West. There is a band that goes through MT, ND, WY, UT, CO, AZ, KS and TX. There is also an area of low emissions in eastern Kentucky.

I added biomass potential layers from the NREL biomass 2008 data set.

You can see them on our National Map.

For instance you can see a map of Forest Residue (dry tons per square mile).

You can click on the layer to get the underlying data value.

Burn that residue before the forest gets a chance to grow back!

I created a page to share our data in KML.

KML is a good format for sharing data. You can use a KML file in Google Maps API or you can import it into your own map with the (easier to use) Google - My Maps.

You can also view the KML in ArcGis Explorer (free), Google Earth, Quantum GIS (powerful open source GIS software), and other programs.

We hope to release our facilities data in KML at a later date (in layers and also allow you to export search results).

(Screenshot of ArcGis Viewer)

I redesigned the homepage for the Map making it more dynamic.

If you aren't logged in, you will see New Facilities (the last ones added or edited), a Featured Facility (randomly selected from our list of opposed facilities), and several charts that track the general status for our campaigns.

There is also a link to our Charts page. On that page you can print and save charts. If you have any suggestions for what charts I should make - let me know!

If you are logged in, you will also see: New People and New Groups.

You can now filter a facility search to show all facilities, unopposed facilities, or opposed facilities.

Thus you could search for proposed biomass facilities with opposition

Note: you must login if you want to see all the details about the opposition! (For privacy reasons, we hide a lot of information about people and groups if you aren't logged in).