Levelling up: A new API for Ember data

Open, accessible data will unlock a clean electricity future

High quality data is crucial to a successful energy transition. It’s vital for understanding the current energy landscape, the challenges of achieving a clean energy sector and the solutions to overcoming those barriers. This knowledge informs effective policy – and it all starts with data.

This is why Ember’s global electricity data has always been freely and openly available in the form of CSVs downloadable from the Ember website. We provide the world’s only open dataset on global electricity generation, updating data for 88 countries and regions every month, and 223 countries and regions every year. Our data-driven insights shift the conversation towards impactful policies around the world. Sharing this dataset democratises energy sector data and allows anyone to access high quality data for their own work towards a clean energy future.

Ember has always been an advocate for open data in the global energy sector. As a part of this commitment to open data, our team has created a REST API, where requests serve data directly from our database. To begin with, this will include monthly and yearly data for the following datasets:

• Electricity generation
• Power sector emissions
• Electricity demand
• Carbon intensity

An API unlocks more ways in which the data can be used. Users can query the exact data they’re searching for without needing to download the entire dataset and use it to construct their own resources. For example, online tools and graphics can be created pointing directly at the most up-to-date Ember data with specific API queries enabling better storytelling within the energy sector. Also, the collection of Ember data can now be automated and scheduled by data-driven organisations injecting Ember data directly into any analysis or modelling work.

Of course, Ember’s data will continue to be available for download as before and through our data explorer and other data tools.

Supporting Materials

Accessing Ember’s new REST API

Visit api.ember-climate.org/docs to view the documentation of Ember’s API and the Getting Started guide. An API key can be freely requested from ember-climate.org/data/api.

Contact us at [email protected] if you have any queries around our data or API.

Acknowledgements

Cover photo

David Robinson / Alamy Stock Photo

Reviewers

The authors would like to thank Claire Kaelin from Ember for her support in writing this piece, and the Subak members for their feedback during the development of the API.