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A decade ago, solar power was almost non-existent in Hungary. It generated just 0.2% of the country’s electricity. Nuclear, coal, and gas dominated the grid.

But in the last ten years, things have changed a lot. You can see this in the chart: solar power has boomed, and now supplies one-quarter of Hungary’s electrical power. In 2024, it overtook gas to become the second-largest source of electricity, after nuclear.

Coal power has been largely displaced, first by gas and now by solar. This has helped cut the country’s CO₂ emissions by 45% since 1990.

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For the first time, in 2024, more than half of the electricity produced in the Netherlands came from renewable sources, and almost all of it (45%) from solar and wind.

As the chart shows, this has been a sharp and recent shift. Even as recently as 2018, over 80% of Dutch electricity was generated by fossil fuels.

The Dutch government signed a national climate accord in 2019 that introduced more than 600 measures to accelerate the shift to low-carbon power. These included further stimulation of solar and wind energy, a rising carbon tax, and the closure of a major coal plant. A rapid surge in renewable electricity followed, with solar and wind growing from 14% to 45% of the electricity mix.

See how each source contributes to the Dutch electricity mix →

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To tackle climate change, the world must transition away from fossil fuels and towards low-carbon power sources.

Greece is almost there when it comes to coal. Coal became the dominant source of electricity in the second half of the 20th century, but it has fallen out of favor in the 21st.

The chart shows that just over a decade ago, almost half of the country’s power came from coal. This has now fallen to 6%.

Solar and wind have replaced it; their share has tripled in the last decade; when combined, they’ve become the largest source.

As a result, the country’s CO₂ emissions from coal have fallen by nearly 90% from their peak, and national emissions as a whole have halved.

Solar and wind are growing rapidly in many countries; explore this data in our energy data explorer →

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Road transport is responsible for around three-quarters of global carbon dioxide emissions from transport. Switching from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles is an important solution to decarbonize our economies.

This chart shows the change in share of new cars that were electric in China, the European Union (EU), and the United States (US) between 2020 and 2023. This includes fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars, though most are fully electric.

In 2020, electric cars were rare everywhere. But by 2023, over one-third of new vehicles in China were electric, compared to less than a quarter in the EU and under a tenth in the US.

While we only have annual data up to 2023, preliminary figures suggest that in 2024, electric cars outsold conventional ones for the first time in China.

Explore data on electric car sales for more countries →

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The world needs to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon power if we’re to reduce our carbon emissions and tackle climate change.

There are two key sources of low-carbon power: renewables (which include solar, wind, hydropower and others) and nuclear.

While rapid growth in solar and wind has increased the amount of power coming from renewables, a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear means it’s playing a shrinking role in the global electricity mix.

In the chart, you can see the share of global electricity coming from fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear since 1985. Since 2000, nuclear and renewables have followed very different trajectories. Back then, both categories made up a similar share of global electricity, but today, renewables make up more than three times as much: 30% compared to 9%.

The total amount of electricity produced by nuclear plants is almost exactly the same as it was two decades ago. But because the world produces much more electricity overall, its share of the electricity mix has declined.

Explore the electricity mix of different countries in our Energy Data Explorer →

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Oil production plays an important role in the economy of many African countries. The chart shows oil rents as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) for the nine African nations most reliant on it.

Libya ranks first, with oil rents equivalent to 56% of its GDP in 2021, followed by Congo at 34% and Angola at 28%. Despite being Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria’s oil rents are just 6.2% of its GDP.

Despite this, these countries’ oil production is relatively modest on a global scale. In 2021, their combined output was less than half of what the United States, the world’s top producer, extracted.

Explore oil production for more countries →

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To decarbonize road transport, the world must move away from petrol and diesel cars and towards electric vehicles and other forms of low-carbon transport.

This transition has already started. In fact, global sales of combustion engine cars are well past the peak and are now falling.

As you can see in the chart, global sales peaked in 2018. This is calculated based on data from the International Energy Agency. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates this peak occurred one year earlier, in 2017.

Sales of electric cars, on the other hand, are growing quickly.

Explore more data on electric car sales across the world →

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To mitigate the negative impacts of climate change, the world needs to quickly transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources such as solar power.

The chart shows how much this transition has accelerated in the last two decades.

In 2004, it took the world about a year to add one gigawatt of solar power capacity. By 2023, the same amount was added, on average, every single day.

For reference, a gigawatt of solar is enough to power approximately 200,000 homes in the US.

Much of this growth has been driven by China, which by 2023 accounted for about 43% of the cumulative installed capacity worldwide.

A big reason for this acceleration has been a large decrease in the price of solar panels. Since 2001, the price has dropped by about 95%, from $6.21 to $0.31 per watt.

Learn more about why renewables like solar became so cheap so fast →

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The United States is the world’s largest oil producer.

The chart shows annual production by country from 1990 to 2023. The US has been the largest producer for the last seven years.

Production in the US gradually declined during the 1990s and early 2000s but increased steeply again post-2010 and is now at an all-time high.

This data comes from the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

Explore oil production data for more countries and further back in time →

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European neighbors Portugal and Spain are currently neck-and-neck in the race to roll out solar and wind power.

On the chart, you can see the share of electricity from the combination of solar and wind in each country. Their rate of progress has been very similar.

In 2023, both countries generated around 40% of their electricity from these sources. Wind power is more prevalent in Portugal, while solar is more used in Spain.

This data comes from Ember.

Explore more data on the rollout of clean energy across the world →

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At the turn of the millennium, Australia got more than 80% of its electricity from coal. This has dropped to less than 50%.

The chart shows how the country’s electricity mix has changed in recent decades. The data comes from the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, coal was initially replaced by gas, with only moderate growth in solar and wind. But in the last five years, solar and wind have been deployed much more quickly. Gas is now on the decline, too. In 2023, solar overtook gas to become Australia’s second-largest electricity source.

While coal is declining, it still supplies much more of Australia’s power than most high-income countries.

Explore how electricity sources are changing in other countries →

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Guyana, a small country in South America, has seen the fastest growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world over the past decade.

This is illustrated in the chart, which shows GDP per capita for Guyana and the World, based on estimates from the World Bank.

The data is adjusted for inflation, so Guyana’s sharp growth is not due to price changes over time.

A large and sudden expansion in oil production has driven most of this growth. In 2020, Guyana began extracting oil. From 2020 to 2023, the country’s oil production grew 425%, making it a key contributor to global crude oil supply growth.

Over this period, Guyana’s GDP per capita rose from below the global average to well above it.

Read more about economic development and oil production →

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In 2023, wind power generated nearly 60% of Denmark’s electricity. This made Denmark the country with the highest share of wind in its electricity mix. This is based on data from Ember.

Wind also contributes significantly to Denmark’s broader energy system. Data from the Energy Institute shows that wind power accounts for over a quarter of Denmark’s total primary energy consumption — the largest figure globally.

Denmark also ranks first in per capita wind power generation, with Sweden close behind.

Explore more data on energy sources in our Data Explorer →

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New petrol and diesel cars are becoming a rarity in Norway.

In 2023, 93% of new cars sold in the country were electric. This is shown in the chart, based on data from the International Energy Agency.

This is a rapid increase from a decade ago when just 6% of new cars were electric.

Here, “electric cars” include fully battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars (which have a smaller battery and also have a combustion engine). But in Norway, battery-electric cars now dominate: in 2023, 85% were fully electric, compared to just 8% of plug-in hybrids.

Explore the data for other countries in our dedicated article →

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According to the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2023, Chile produced 9.4% of its primary energy from solar sources, the highest share in any country. When we look at electricity alone, solar produced 20% of the total.

This marks a trend of continued year-on-year growth in a country that, just a decade earlier, generated almost no electricity from solar.

Chile's growth has been faster than that of other solar champions like Spain and Australia, where the adoption of these technologies started earlier.

Much of Chile's solar energy is captured in the Atacama Desert. This region, in Northern Chile, receives the highest level of sunlight exposure in the world and is home to Latin America’s first solar thermal plant.

Explore data on energy production and sources, country by country →

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The United Kingdom was the birthplace of coal. It has now, effectively, died there.

As shown in the chart, in the late 1980s, around two-thirds of the UK’s electricity came from coal. By the time I was born in the 1990s, this had dropped to just over half.

The use of coal has plummeted in my lifetime. It now makes up less than 2% of the UK’s electricity.

Coal was first replaced by gas but is now being pushed out by wind, solar, and biomass.

Read more about the death of UK coal →

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Since 2020, 14 countries have consistently generated over 95% renewable electricity, according to Ember’s Yearly electricity data. In eight of these countries, electricity has been almost entirely renewable-based for over 20 years.

Renewable sources include hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, and wave power. In all these countries, the largest source of electricity was hydropower.

Sub-Saharan countries, however, use significantly less electricity in their energy mix compared to countries in Europe or North America.

Read more on renewable energy →

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According to the most recent data from the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy, India now consumes more coal than the continents of Europe and North America combined.

The chart shows this was not the case until recently. Coal consumption in Europe and North America was high for a long time but has significantly decreased in recent decades. At the same time, India’s consumption has steadily increased.

India has industrialized and is growing rapidly. It has a huge demand for cheap energy, and the country’s abundant coal reserves are being used to meet it.

On a per-capita basis, coal consumption in India has only just passed levels in either region. That’s after centuries of higher consumption in North America and Europe.

Explore our detailed data on energy production and sources, country by country →

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Energy demand in China has increased rapidly over the last few decades due to rising incomes and industrialization.

The country now uses about the same amount of energy per person as the European Union. You can see this in this chart, with new data from the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

This measure of primary energy is based on the substitution method, which tries to account for the inefficiencies of fossil fuels compared to renewables.

Note that this does not account for energy embedded in traded goods, so some of this increase in China has come from producing goods exported to other countries.

We have just updated our energy data based on the latest release →

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Coal dominated Europe's electricity mix over the 20th century, but it is quickly dying in many countries in the 21st.

The chart shows the share of electricity that comes from coal for a range of countries in Western Europe. The data comes from Ember.

Transitioning away from coal has helped reduce carbon emissions and local air pollutants.

Explore the data →