We describe fundamental energy dissipation in dynamic nanoscale processes in terms of the localization of the interactions. In this respect, the areal density of the energy dissipated and the effective area of interaction in which each process occurs are calculated for four elementary dissipative processes. It is the ratio between these two, which we term M that provides information about how localized the interactions are. We show that neither the phase lag, nor the magnitude of the energy dissipated alone provide information about energy localization but M has to be considered instead.