Abstract
The project focuses on international trading and the effects of globalization. We showed the values that
international trade generates globally every year, and we identified the major actors. Then, the
research focuses on energy production, which is currently one of the goods that majorly impacts our
modern lifestyles.
The work is presented on a web page that enables a deeper exploration of the data,
thanks to interactable visualizations and a narrative explanation given by the analysis of the graphs.
As we can see most of the arrows start and end in European and American countries, this is why OECD, the organization we got the data from, tracks data of 38 countries which are its members. This is the reason to why some major world trade powers like Russia aren’t present.
We can see that the top of trading connections is always dominated by the USA and, especially the earlier years, Germany, we will confirm this intuition with our next visualization.
Focusing on Europe, we can clearly see how deep the trading web between these countries is, with the most active ones being Germany, Italy, Spain, and UK.
Trade Value
The first graph clearly showed us a sector that is dominated by American and European
countries.
These countries have always spent a lot of resources to create strong connections with other states
and establish a concrete and solid trade web, it’s only natural that they beat other continent’s
forces.
The next step is to check out how these powerful countries generated their trading empire, by
comparing them and their evolution over a range of time.
As expected, the bar race shows us a domination of the USA, followed by many European
countries, such as UK, France, and especially Germany, the one country that can rival the
Americans. While the German imports value has always been decently lower than the American one, this
difference is much less apparent when talking about exports, where the two forces share are far and
away the highest ones, close to each other.
The rest of the top is, as mentioned, share mostly by other European countries, with Canada being the
only other American one.
Energy production share per nation
International trade shapes the industrial structure and is a source of technological progress. It is closely related to energy use and production, CO2 emissions, and the energy and environmental efficiency of a country. Trade in energy plays a unique role in international trade. Various energy products, such as natural gas or electricity produced from wind or solar power, and associated energy services, such as pipeline transport services, are important inputs in many economic sectors
While goods trade affect our lives in a large amount of ways, allowing us to obtain products that would otherwise be not accessible in a country, what truly powers our daily lives is energy.
Energy is a core and indispensable part of our society. If a country is not able to produce all of the necessary energy, it must obtain it from other places. So it might be interesting to check what energy is produced in each country.
The intertwining of trade in energy and issues of economic development are parts of a whole. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of international trade can provide valuable insights into energy production trends and vice versa. This can help countries strategize their energy production and trade policies for sustainable development.
National Energy Production
These considerations lead us to the last graph: a tree map of the European countries and the share
of their energy production.
By playing around with the graph and switching between some countries we can see the general trend of
this proportion. Most countries are, dominated by renewable energy and biofuels, indeed one
can notice its rectangle as one of the biggest in most of the graphs.
It is worth noting that whenever a country has invested in nuclear energy, it is always the
larger type (or very close to it), with the solid fossil fuels sector behaving similarly.
There are also a few countries that are ruled by less widespread types of energy, such as Estonia
with oil shale and sands.
Energy production share per nation
By looking at the distribution of various countries energy production, one can notice the different approaches taken by each country, these approaches can be dictated by need or economic gain.
For example Germany produces a lot of different types of energy with none being astoundigly above the others. This allows for a flexible management of energy resources, with certain types of it being more suited in particular fields, but also of trade, because having a large selection of categories is very beneficial as it can be highly requested in multiple different markets. This makes Germany one of the most consistent and flexilble enrgy producers out there.
Countries like Estonia use instead a different approach. Almost the entire energy production of the country is dedicated to Oil shale and sands, renewables and biofuels. A conclusion one could make is that a large part of this energy is sold to other countries. Indeed Estonia is considered a cornerstone of oil shale trading in the world.
We can truly understand that countries either trade energy because they need it, or because they can provide other countries with it, making energy one of the core components of goods transport between countries. Each of these forces can give to others what they need. This is in general the principal and main advantage of trading and alliances, and shows how hard could losing these connections impact our daily lives.