It's a $6 trillion dollar market…. The User's Guide to Energy

Alexis Madrigal explains how energy really works in America  Read more

The energy system is vast. How big? It’s a $6 trillion dollar market. Trillion! Such a big industry consumes vast amounts of natural resources and processes them through a dizzying array of infrastructure. And all that stuff working together keeps us zipping across cities and nations, while pulling power from the grid to power anything from a lightbulb to a computer.

But despite all the complexity, there are some basics that make the rest of it all easier to understand. So, in our new video series, we tried to break down some of the fundamentals of the American energy system. We’re going to break down the numbers on how Americans use energy and dive to the microscopic level to see the components of crude oil.

…So, we asked six basic questions about energy, and answered them in animated explainers voiced by me and (beautifully) illustrated byLindsey Testolin. This is our first deep collaboration with The Atlantic’s new, expanded video team, and we couldn’t be happier about how it came out. Stay tuned for the videos and several other posts in this special report.