Data

How quickly did each electricity source scale up?

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Data sources and processing

Insights about this data

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What you should know about this indicator

Each electricity source is tracked from the first year in which its global electricity production surpassed 100 TWh. For example, wind power surpassed 100 TWh in 2005, and hence the first data point (on year zero) corresponds to wind power's global electricity production in 2005; the next data point is wind power's production in 2006, and so on.
This means that year zero corresponds to different calendar years for different electricity sources. For example, year zero corresponds to 2005 for wind power, but to 2013 for solar power.

How quickly did each electricity source scale up?

Measured in terawatt-hours.

Source

Ember (2026); Pinto et al. (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Last updated

February 6, 2026

Next expected update

February 2027

Date range

0–106

Unit

terawatt-hours

What you should know about this indicator

Each electricity source is tracked from the first year in which its global electricity production surpassed 100 TWh. For example, wind power surpassed 100 TWh in 2005, and hence the first data point (on year zero) corresponds to wind power's global electricity production in 2005; the next data point is wind power's production in 2006, and so on.
This means that year zero corresponds to different calendar years for different electricity sources. For example, year zero corresponds to 2005 for wind power, but to 2013 for solar power.

How quickly did each electricity source scale up?

Measured in terawatt-hours.

Source

Ember (2026); Pinto et al. (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Last updated

February 6, 2026

Next expected update

February 2027

Date range

0–106

Unit

terawatt-hours

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Ember – Yearly Electricity Data Europe

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, imports and demand data for European countries.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on

January 26, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

Ember - Yearly Electricity Data Europe (2026).
Most of the data is taken from the European Commission's Eurostat annual data.

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, imports and demand data for European countries.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on

January 26, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

Ember - Yearly Electricity Data Europe (2026).
Most of the data is taken from the European Commission's Eurostat annual data.

Ember – Yearly Electricity Data

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, import and demand data for over 200 geographies.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on

January 9, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

Ember - Yearly Electricity Data (2026).
The data is collected from multi-country datasets (EIA, Eurostat, Energy Institute, UN) as well as national sources (e.g China data from the National Bureau of Statistics).

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, import and demand data for over 200 geographies.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on

January 9, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

Ember - Yearly Electricity Data (2026).
The data is collected from multi-country datasets (EIA, Eurostat, Energy Institute, UN) as well as national sources (e.g China data from the National Bureau of Statistics).

Pinto et al. – Global historical electricity

Global historical electricity, from 1900 to 2017. The data was extracted from the supplementary materials of Pinto et al. (2023), "The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition".

Retrieved on

February 6, 2026

Retrieved from

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

Ricardo Pinto, Sofia T. Henriques, Paul E. Brockway, Matthew Kuperus Heun, Tânia Sousa,
The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition, Energy, Volume 269, 2023, 126775, ISSN 0360-5442, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775.

Global historical electricity, from 1900 to 2017. The data was extracted from the supplementary materials of Pinto et al. (2023), "The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition".

Retrieved on

February 6, 2026

Retrieved from

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

Ricardo Pinto, Sofia T. Henriques, Paul E. Brockway, Matthew Kuperus Heun, Tânia Sousa,
The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition, Energy, Volume 269, 2023, 126775, ISSN 0360-5442, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775.

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.

Read about our data pipeline

Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We combine historical estimates from Pinto et al. (2023) with Ember's Yearly electricity data. Where data from both sources is available, data from Ember is prioritized.
For each electricity source, we identify the first year in which global electricity production surpassed 100 TWh, and track the evolution of global electricity production from that year onward.

Reuse this work

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: How quickly did each electricity source scale up?”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from Ember, Pinto et al.. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260212-084537/grapher/electricity-source-scale-up.html [online resource] (archived on February 12, 2026).

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 (2026); Pinto et al. (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Ember (2026); Pinto et al. (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “How quickly did each electricity source scale up?” [dataset]. Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data Europe”; Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data”; Pinto et al., “Global historical electricity” [original data]. Retrieved February 24, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260212-084537/grapher/electricity-source-scale-up.html (archived on February 12, 2026).