Which countries get the most electricity from low-carbon sources?
Globally, 39% of our electricity came from low-carbon sources in 2020. But there is a lot of variation in low-carbon electricity production across the world. We see this in the map, which shows the share of electricity that is low-carbon.
Some countries get all – or almost all – of their electricity from low-carbon sources. Paraguay, Iceland, Sweden, and Uruguay, for example, get more than 95% of their electricity from these sources. France gets more than 90%.
However, many other countries are still strongly reliant on fossil fuels, with only a few percent being low-carbon.
Low-carbon electricity can come from nuclear, or renewables such as hydropower, solar and wind. The contribution of each varies from country-to-country. We see this in the stacked bar chart: In Iceland and Uruguay, for example, most electricity comes from renewables – particularly hydropower. In others, such as France and Sweden, nuclear energy plays a dominant role.
In this chart you can explore the full breakdown of electricity production by source – from coal and gas; to nuclear; hydropower; solar and wind.
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Hannah Ritchie (2021) - “Which countries get the most electricity from low-carbon sources?” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-electricity-by-country' [Online Resource]BibTeX citation
@article{owid-low-carbon-electricity-by-country,
author = {Hannah Ritchie},
title = {Which countries get the most electricity from low-carbon sources?},
journal = {Our World in Data},
year = {2021},
note = {https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-electricity-by-country}
}
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