Renewables supplied 33.5% of the world's electricity in 2025, up from 18.7% in 2000. Output more than tripled, from 2,867 to 10,702 terawatt hours, because total generation also doubled. Almost all of the extra share came from wind and solar. Hydro is still the largest renewable source, and the country ranking is led by hydro systems, not by the new technologies.

The short version

• A rising share and a rising total. Renewables went from 18.7% of world electricity in 2000 to 31.7% in 2024 and 33.5% in 2025. Generation rose 3.7 times, to 10,702 TWh.
• Wind and solar did the catching up. They went from 0.2% of electricity to 17.3%. Hydro's share fell from 17.2% to 13.9%, even as hydro output grew.
• Clean power is 42%. Ember's "clean" group (renewables plus nuclear) rose from 35.3% to 42.3%. Nuclear's own share fell from 16.6% to 8.8%, so clean power rose more slowly than renewables.
• The map is uneven. In 2024, 44 of 106 systems generating at least 10 TWh a year got half or more of their electricity from renewables. Latin America and the Caribbean were already at 62%. The Middle East and North Africa were at 6.5%.
• Goals are about capacity, and they are not yet met. COP28 called for tripling global renewable power capacity by 2030. The IEA's 2025 forecast is 2.6 times the 2022 level, short of that pledge. Those figures are projections, not observations.

World electricity from renewable sources, as a share of the total and in absolute terms, 2000 to 2025:

How the mix changed

Fossil fuels still supplied 57.7% of electricity in 2025. Coal remained the largest single source. That is compatible with a falling coal share: total electricity grew faster than coal did, so coal output is still higher than in 2000. We set that out in Coal's share of world electricity has fallen, but its output has grown. Solar overtook wind in 2025, and together they now generate more electricity than hydro.

China generated 3,324 TWh of renewable electricity in 2024, a third of the world total, while renewables were 33.2% of its own mix, close to the world average. The United States generated 1,057 TWh (24.1% of its mix) and Brazil 662 TWh (88.0%). Volume and share tell different stories.

Which countries generate the most of their reported electricity from renewables

Country ranks use 2024, the latest year with near-complete coverage (193 economies). We keep systems that generated at least 10 TWh, 106 countries covering 97% of world reported generation. These are national generation statistics compiled by Ember (EIA for Ethiopia), not a meter on every diesel genset. A 100% bar means 100% of that reported TWh. Most of the top is hydro. Uruguay is the main wind and solar case in this group (42.8% of generation).

Note: Albania, Namibia, Uganda, Eswatini, Malawi, Sierra Leone and El Salvador generated under 10 TWh in 2024 and would also have made this top 12 on share alone.

The fastest rises in share between 2000 and 2024, among systems above the 10 TWh floor, were in Europe. Denmark went from 15.5% to 89.2%. Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain each added more than 40 percentage points. Latin America and the Caribbean were already at 60.0% in 2000 and 61.9% in 2024. The EU rose from 15.5% to 48.0%. Asia rose from 13.7% to 28.6%, and the Middle East and North Africa from 3.9% to 6.5%.

The largest producers are a different list

The ranking above is not a list of the world's biggest power systems. The 12 countries that generated the most electricity in 2024 produced 73% of the world total. Among them, Brazil has the highest renewable share (88.0%) and Saudi Arabia the lowest (2.4%). China is close to the world average at 33.2%, but it generated 10,025 TWh, more than twice the United States.

The 12 largest electricity producers in 2024, ranked by renewable share. The bar is the renewable percentage. The right-hand column is each country's total generation, not its renewable generation:

Goals and forecasts (not observations)

At COP28 in 2023, nearly 200 countries pledged to triple global renewable power capacity by 2030. The IEA reads that as at least 11,000 GW of installed renewable capacity. Ember's observed capacity is 3,365 GW in 2022 and 5,133 GW in 2025. Capacity is not the same as generation. Wind and solar produce fewer hours of electricity per gigawatt than hydro or nuclear.

The IEA's Renewables 2025 main case (a forecast) expects global renewable power capacity to rise by 4,600 GW between now and 2030, reaching 2.6 times its 2022 level, short of the tripling pledge. An accelerated case reaches 2.8 times if permitting, grids and finance improve. Solar PV accounts for almost 80% of the projected increase. We report those IEA figures as the agency's outlook, not as data we computed.

What this does and does not show

• Electricity, not all energy. Transport, heat and industry still use a lot of fossil fuels that never become electricity. A high renewable share of electricity is not a high renewable share of total energy.
• Reported generation, not every generator. Ember compiles national electricity statistics (gross generation where it can). Small diesel generators and other off-grid plants are often missing, especially where the grid is limited. Ethiopia's 100% bar is 100% of EIA-reported generation, not a claim that no thermal generators exist in the country.
• Generation, not capacity. We rank countries by electricity generated. A large idle fleet would not show up here.
• Clean is not the same as renewable. Ember's clean group adds nuclear. France and Sweden look much cleaner on that measure than on renewables alone.
• Hydro years vary. Drought can cut hydro output, so a single year (including 2024 ranks) can move a hydro-heavy country.
• The 10 TWh floor. Smaller systems can be 90% renewable and still be omitted from the chart. Those that would have made this top 12 on share alone are listed in the footnote.
• 2025 is complete for the world, not for every country. Ember had 93 economies for 2025 when we downloaded the file, against 193 for 2024. Country ranks therefore use 2024.
• Forecasts can miss. The IEA and COP28 numbers are targets or modelled outlooks. Recent years in Ember can also be revised as national data arrives.

Method and data

Data: Ember's Yearly Electricity Data (global CSV, one row per area, year and electricity source), downloaded on 30 October 2026, covering 2000 to 2025. We used the World aggregate for the long-run mix, Ember's own "Share of generation (%)" values, and the "Renewables", "Clean", "Wind and solar", "Hydro" and "Total generation" source rows. Country ranks use 2024, "Country or economy" areas, a 10 TWh floor on total generation, and descending renewable share. The footnote lists countries below 10 TWh whose renewable share was at least as high as 12th place. A second chart takes the 12 countries with the highest total generation and orders them by renewable share. Bars are the renewable share. A separate column shows total generation in TWh, not renewable TWh. Regional figures use Ember's Area aggregates (EU, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa). One terawatt hour (TWh) is one billion kilowatt hours.

Citation and licence: Ember, "Yearly Electricity Data", published online at ember-energy.org, https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/, accessed 30 October 2026. Ember releases this data under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. Swift Lake selected the series, applied the 20 TWh floor, computed the 2000 to 2024 share changes and drew both charts, so all derived figures and charts are our own calculations and are not endorsed by Ember. IEA figures are quoted from the reports linked below and were not recomputed.

Sources and further reading:

• Ember, Yearly Electricity Data and the global yearly CSV used here.
• Ember, electricity data methodology (PDF) and the Electricity Data Explorer.
• Swift Lake, Coal's share of world electricity has fallen, but its output has grown, using an earlier extract of the same Ember dataset (25 October 2026). Shares in that piece differ by at most a few tenths of a point from the figures here.
• Ember, Global Electricity Review 2025 and the 2030 Global Renewable Target Tracker.
• IEA, Renewables 2025, executive summary (capacity forecast to 2030).
• IEA, COP28 Tripling Renewable Capacity Pledge, executive summary (the 11,000 GW reading of the 2030 pledge).