Global Power Plant Database (WRI)
Quick answer: The WRI Global Power Plant Database inventories 34,936 power plants worldwide with location, capacity, fuel type and ownership — hosted here as a 7.9 MB GeoJSON with a live map and fuel-mix summary.
About this dataset
34,936 power plants worldwide with capacity, fuel type, owner and commissioning year — hosted as a 7.9 MB GeoJSON with an instant map and capacity summary.
The Global Power Plant Database from WRI is an open inventory of the world's power plants: 34,936 facilities with coordinates, capacity in MW, primary fuel, owner, and commissioning year — about 5.7 TW of installed capacity in total. This page hosts a web-ready GeoJSON (same records, coordinates rounded to ~11 m) so the map and summary render directly; each plant is coloured by fuel and sized by capacity (<10 MW, 10–100 MW, 100–500 MW, 0.5–2 GW, >2 GW), and the year scrubber under the map replays the build-out: drag it or press Play to watch commissioned capacity accumulate from the earliest plants to today.
How to download
- 1 Explore the hosted map above — the summary totals capacity and breaks plants down by fuel.
- 2 Download the hosted GeoJSON for energy-infrastructure mapping or emissions modelling.
- 3 Use the WRI portal when you need the original CSV columns (generation, ownership splits).
- 4 Join with VIIRS night-lights or population layers for exposure analysis.
FAQ
What fuel types are in the database?
Coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, oil, biomass, waste, geothermal and other types; each plant is tagged with its primary fuel.
How up-to-date is the database?
The hosted copy comes from WRI release v1.3.0; the portal publishes newer releases as official statistics arrive.
How are plants rendered on the map?
Colour encodes the primary fuel (coal grey, gas amber, oil brown, hydro blue, nuclear violet, wind cyan, solar yellow, biomass lime, geothermal pink, waste grey-blue, storage teal and so on) and marker size encodes capacity in bands: under 10 MW, 10–100 MW, 100–500 MW, 0.5–2 GW and above 2 GW. Click a plant for its exact capacity, fuel, owner and commissioning year.
How does the year timeline work?
The scrubber under the map filters the layer to plants commissioned up to the selected year — so dragging it (or pressing Play) replays the global build-out, from the earliest hydro and coal stations to today's solar and wind fleets. The caption shows how many plants and how much capacity existed by that year; plants with no published commissioning year stay visible throughout.
How much capacity does the hosted file cover?
About 5.4 TW across 34,936 plants — the summary above computes the exact total, and the fuel breakdown shows coal, gas and hydro dominating installed capacity.
Can I use the data commercially?
Yes — WRI publishes it under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to the World Resources Institute.