A planetary atlas of material flowsOpening this view…
Start with an everyday object or material.
Jump directly to a material, regional account or named facility.
From oil fields and coal mines to refineries, power plants and everyday energy. Follow fossil fuels through production, trade, transformation and use.
Extraction brings fuel feedstocks into the economy. Crude oil and coal are separate trade categories.
Extraction and preparation produce their own residues.
Preparation and refining produce materials suitable for different uses. Not every fossil feedstock becomes fuel.
Processing has several output and residual streams.
Products move between producers, processors and users. Customs data records borders, not every domestic movement.
The recorded partner can be an intermediate destination.
Combustion releases energy and converts the fuel into other substances. Much of the carbon leaves as carbon dioxide.
Other emissions and solid residues depend on the fuel and equipment.
Atmospheric emissions and managed residues are material destinations too. They are not a closed recycling loop for the original fuel.
The app does not infer facility emissions from customs tonnage.
Explore the local operations and regional systems that collect, transform and recover this material.
Checking available records…
Copper may be recovered as metal. Burning fuel changes its chemistry and disperses much of the material in gaseous products. These require different accounts.