My Project

Throughout this 360 cluster, we have been exploring place and what it means to exist in a world dominated and created by fossil fuel consumption. While we have studied various forms of energy from all over the world, I wanted to bring my project home to Minnesota, where I was born and raised. The graphs you see here are embroidered renderings of the different types of energy consumption in Minnesota during three different years. The data I used, which is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, records the use of coal, natural gas, petroleum, nuclear, and renewable energy, along with the interstate flow of electricity and net imports of electricity. I chose to use the years 1969, 1989, and 2019, as I felt that a wide spread of time could show the change in Minnesotan energy consumption. In order to create these graphs, I first summed the total amount of energy consumption in British thermal units (btu) per year, and then calculated the percentage of each type of energy used out of the whole.  I then used Google Earth to create maps of Minnesota and broke them down into sectors using the percentages. Ultimately, the data shows that while renewable energy consumption is increasing, the vast majority of Minnesota’s energy usage still comes from oil and natural gas. 

The Physicalization