I had a chance to visit the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge last week, and among the many inspiring things I saw was this beautiful information graphic – albeit not for its content – illustrating the total energy flow in and out of the U.S. in 2005. The image was used in a presentation on sustainable architecture by Kent Larson.

Two things to notice in the illustration are the overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels, and that nearly two thirds of all petroleum/crude oil consumed is imported. When looking for the image, I came across several other equally powerful visualizations of energy use, such as the one below which illustrates the incredible amount of energy lost when converting fossil fuels to electricity.