Would it be useful to have "a Google Maps of the global energy system"?

It's really odd that, on the one hand, you can find the nearest cafe for any location on Earth.

Yet most countries don't even know how many generators they have, let alone where they all are!

My guess is that a complete, open map would be absolutely 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭!

It would ultimately reduce emissions (which is the bit that gets me most excited).

A map would enable energy forecasting, inform policy & planning, speed up research, etc.

The map could be open, collaborative, uniform, constantly updated, & machine-readable.

It could capture far more than just the spatial locations of energy assets: It could capture functional relationships; relationships from assets to companies, policies, datasets, etc.

There are a bunch of amazing projects moving in this direction, such as:

* @OpenInfraMap (visualising @OpenStreetMap data) by @russss
* The @OrdnanceSurvey & @EnergyNetworks UK Digital System Map pilot
* PUDL by @CatalystCoop
* @GlobalEnergyMon
* OPSD
* Open Energy Ontology

In @OpenClimateFix, we're considering attempting to raise some money to help map the global energy system, and we'd 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 help figuring out if that's useful and, if so, how best can we help?

Below is one idea for how we could help...

There's lots of open data describing the energy system.

But these datasets are super-tedious to merge into a single, de-duplicated, harmonised map because these datasets are in different formats & - crucially - use different naming conventions.

Maybe we can help merge datasets:

1. Help create an openly-governed ontology (perhaps by helping with OEO / OSM?)

2. Write open-source scripts to convert source data to the common ontology. Encourage the community to create scripts for more datasets. But, 'just' converting to a common ontology is the easy bit!

3. The hard bit is de-duplicating & merging, because datasets use different naming conventions & rarely agree on what constitutes "a thing"! Merging is probably impossible to fully automate. We could use 'citizen science', following in the footsteps of @GalaxyZoo, @HOTOSM, etc.

That is, we could build a website where 1,000s of casual volunteers can click through small patches of map & click a button to say "the auto merge looks good!" or "the auto merge is wrong; the correct relationship is x"

In a lunch break, a volunteer could merge 100s of assets

4. Once the data has been de-duplicated by volunteers, maybe the data could go into @OpenStreetMap?

More details of this proposal here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c2SrqO0eCjfjPgcymA0glExo_B8-X-WTJMPd0ZrqAKI/edit#

Of course, some details of the energy system can't be shared for security / privacy / commercial reasons. Sensitive assets could be 'anonymised' by clumping them together. (e.g. "this street contains 12 domestic EV chargers").

We'd 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 feedback on this idea. Especially:

1. Would a harmonised, global energy map be useful?
2. Which projects are doing similar things?
3. What are the blockers?
4. How can @OpenClimateFix help?!
5. Where should we start?