Interactivity Is Not Enough: Synthesizing Support in Public-Facing Visualizations of the Energy Transition

Public-facing interactive visualizations increasingly shape how broader publics encounter complex sustainability-related evidence. In the energy domain, such artifacts communicate data, scenarios, and model outputs beyond expert communities, yet their value depends on whether users can both operate the artifact and interpret what it shows. This paper examines how such support is realized in interactive energy data visualizations (IEDViz). We conduct a structured artifact review of 32 public-facing IEDViz, inductively derive a catalog of operational, interpretive, and hybrid support elements, analyze their realization using concepts from onboarding, guidance, and narrative visualization, and identify recurring support strategies through hierarchical clustering. The results yield a catalog of 32 support elements and reveal four archetypes of support realization. The paper contributes a practice-grounded support catalog, an archetypal synthesis of support strategies, and a theoretical perspective on how IEDViz mediate complex energy knowledge for diverse audiences.