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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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Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this article, please also cite the underlying data sources. This article can be cited as:

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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