Data
Total electricity generation as share of primary energy
Ember and Energy Institute
What you should know about this indicator
- Includes commercial solid fuels only, i.e. bituminous coal and anthracite (hard coal), and lignite and brown (sub-bituminous) coal, and other commercial solid fuels. Excludes coal converted to liquid or gaseous fuels, but includes coal consumed in transformation processes. Differences between the consumption figures and the world production statistics are accounted for by stock changes, and unavoidable disparities in the definition, measurement or conversion of coal supply and demand data.
- Includes inland demand plus international aviation and marine bunkers and refinery fuel and loss. Consumption of biogasoline (such as ethanol) and biodiesel are excluded while derivatives of coal and natural gas are included. Differences between the world consumption figures and world production statistics are accounted for by stock changes, consumption of non-petroleum additives and substitute fuels and unavoidable disparities in the definition, measurement or conversion of oil supply and demand data.
- Excludes natural gas converted to liquid fuels but includes derivatives of coal as well as natural gas consumed in Gas-to-Liquids transformation. The difference between the world consumption figures and the world production statistics is due to variations in stocks at storage facilities and liquefaction plants, together with unavoidable disparities in the definition, measurement or conversion of gas supply and demand data.
Total electricity generation as share of primary energy
Ember and Energy Institute
Measured as a percentage of total, direct primary energy consumption.
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
1985–2023
Unit
%
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
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.
- The Statistical Review of World Energy only provides data on input-equivalent primary energy consumption, not on direct primary energy consumption. We estimate the direct primary energy consumption as the sum of the primary energy consumption from coal, oil, gas, and biofuels, plus the electricity generation from low-carbon sources (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy and other renewables). Finally, the share of electricity in direct primary energy consumption is calculated as the ratio of total electricity generation to direct primary energy consumption (multiplied by 100).
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- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
- All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.
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: Total electricity generation as share of primary energy”, 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/electricity-as-a-share-of-primary-energy [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. “Total electricity generation as share of primary energy – Ember and Energy Institute” [dataset]. Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data”; Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy” [original data]. Retrieved December 12, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-as-a-share-of-primary-energy