Data
Carbon intensity of electricity generation
Ember and Energy Institute
About this data
Carbon intensity of electricity generation
Ember and Energy Institute
Greenhouse gases emitted per unit of generated electricity, measured in grams of CO₂ equivalents per kilowatt-hour.
Source
Ember (2024); Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 20, 2024
Next expected update
June 2025
Date range
1990–2023
Unit
grams of CO₂ equivalents per kilowatt-hour
Related research and writing
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
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All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
- We rely on Ember as the primary source of electricity data. While the Energy Institute (EI) provides primary energy (not just electricity) consumption data and it provides a longer time-series (dating back to 1965) than Ember (which only dates back to 1990), EI does not provide data for all countries or for all sources of electricity (for example, only Ember provides data on electricity from bioenergy). So, where data from Ember is available for a given country and year, we rely on it as the primary source. We then supplement this with data from EI where data from Ember is not available.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Carbon intensity of electricity generation”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from Ember, Energy Institute. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Ember (2024); Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2024) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
Ember (2024); Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Carbon intensity of electricity generation – Ember and Energy Institute” [dataset]. Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data”; Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy” [original data]. Retrieved March 28, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity