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Electricity generation from low-carbon sources

Ember and Energy Institute
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About this data

Electricity generation from low-carbon sources
Ember and Energy Institute
Low-carbon sources correspond to renewables and nuclear power, that produce significantly less greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil fuels.
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
1965–2023
Unit
terawatt-hours

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

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
May 8, 2024
Retrieved from
https://ember-climate.org/data-catalogue/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 (2024).
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).

The Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy analyses data on world energy markets from the prior year.

Retrieved on
June 20, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/
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.
Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2024).

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 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.

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: Electricity generation from low-carbon sources”, 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/low-carbon-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 Data

Full citation

Ember (2024); Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Electricity generation from low-carbon sources – Ember and Energy Institute” [dataset]. Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data”; Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy” [original data]. Retrieved November 27, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/low-carbon-electricity