Long have I seen Sankey visualizations. Long have I liked Sankey visualizations. Long have I never known their name.

Though these graphs can overload you on information at first glance, everything is pretty neatly organized when you inspect it more closely. The big bonus of Sankey graphs is how everything is shown and everything is sized proportionally. For large sets that can be broken down into many constituent parts – like everything that generates or uses energy – a Sankey is the way to go.

Sankey graphs lend themselves well to artistic flavor. You can see the “Electricity” block near the top was large enough to fit a drawing of an outlet. Visuals near the residential/commercial/industrial/transportation categories help as well. We all know what they are, but getting a quick visual along with the name of what it’s representing can make it register in our brains much faster.

The key factor of these charts is how everything is shown proportionally. The important factor of data visualization is creating a visual form of data in order to drive home the point being made. In this graph, you can see that there are about 59.4 quads of unused energy. Lots of this is unusable energy, or energy released through reactions, but this visual drives home one point that wouldn’t be as obvious without a visual: we waste a lot of energy when we try to generate energy.