U.S. Energy Stability

This was the image that launched my project. Before I made this I had no idea that the U.S. had ran the largest energy deficit on the planet spanning from 1970 - 2022.

I became interested in how the U.S had reached this point and how the U.S. could solve it in the future.

The core of this project revolved around sourcing and cleaning data from the EIA, enabling me to assess the U.S.'s reliance on foreign energy sources and make projections for the future. To effectively convey these insights, I coded a custom dashboard with Panel, providing an intuitive visual representation of the data and its implications.

Global heat map: U.S. net energy deficit from 1970-2022

For this project, I invested over 100 hours of dedicated effort. A substantial portion of this time was dedicated to mastering Panel, but also a significant amount of effort was directed towards in-depth analysis that, while not included in the final presentation, contributed to a comprehensive understanding of the data landscape.

The Steps I Took:

  1. Created a global net energy heat map

  2. Created a historical line chart of U.S. Production vs Consumption

  3. Looked at Projected Growth of U.S. population and consequent energy demand

  4. Checked U.S. future energy production

  5. Checked top suppliers energy production with emphasis on Canada & Mexico

  6. Confirmed that if the U.S. does not increase energy production then we will be reliant on energy imports once again.

Tools I Used:

  • Panel

  • Python

  • HoloViews

  • Anaconda

  • Excel

Why I took these step:

  1. Showed U.S. energy stability (or lack of)

  2. Checked whether or not this was just a historical issue

  3. Determined if the U.S. energy demand would continue to grow or stabilize

  4. Investigated if the U.S. could support the future energy demand

  5. Looked into alternative energy suppliers if the U.S. failed to meet its energy demand focusing on Canada and Mexico as major historical trading partners.

  6. Outlined a clear cause and effect to spur action

Challenges:

  1. I had BIG DREAMS for this project. The scope I originally wanted to cover was to large. I wanted to go through and breakdown the U.S. energy sector by type like coal, petrol, or hydro. However, as I dug into this project I realized that the amount of data sets I would need to track down, clean, merge, and then generate the insights for the current and future energy market would equate to a full time job of several months.

    So I had to scale back a bit.

    Instead, I focused on creating a complete and concise overview of the U.S. energy market and learning to make my own custom Panel dashboards outside of paid for BI tools like Tableau or PowerBI.

  2. My second challenge was finding energy data for Canada and Mexico. Canada's energy exports are not broken down by the exact types and are measured by generated revenue, as in, millions of dollars, vs the U.S. data which is broken down by type in Quadrillion British Thermal Units.

    As for Mexico, well, I just don't speak (or read) espanol, so I couldn't even check their energy export pages.

    In the end, I sourced my data from the IEA (not to be confused with the U.S. EIA), the International Energy Agency, that Canada and Mexico are both apart of. This data broke down the energy by type and all I had to do was convert it from TJ to QBTU for it to be compatible with my other data sets (Another reason why I love Python).

Dashboard is only available on desktop.

Use the tabs to move around the dashboard

Summary: If the U.S. does not increase energy production again, then it will be reliant on other countries, which are historically Canada & Mexico, to fill the deficit, else the U.S. will risk volatile energy supply and prices.

Data Sources:

  1. Energy Data

  2. Canada & Mexico Data

  3. Json File

  4. Population Data

  5. Population Projection Data

Retrospective:

After checking the U.S. historical line chart, I thought my analysis would show that the U.S. was set to be energy independent into the foreseeable future. Surprisingly, it turns out not to be the case. It was a very insightful project that demonstrated the need for the U.S. to strengthen its energy independence and how other countries U.S. relations will continue to be important for energy trade.

The most challenging part of this was not the analysis, but the panel dashboard. It’s a little outside the scope as a data analyst but it was a very rewarding process to learn how to make my own interactive charts and create a dashboard viewable to the public without the BI tools commonly used.

If I were to go farther into this project I’d start be breaking it up and doing a thorough analysis on major energy types and how they are used in the U.S. to highlight the future demand curve vs supply curve. Then I’d be able to make recommendations on what energy type the U.S. should focus on increasing production with first.