Renewable Energy Shift

What it shows

Most renewable energy rankings are led by Iceland, Norway and Canada, which built their hydropower decades ago. This project asks which countries changed between 2014 and 2024. It separates the countries that already had renewables from the ones that moved, and it shows which source drove each change: hydro, wind, solar, or other renewables.

Reading it

The page has four figures: the world total, every country by how much it moved, the change split by source, and an explorer for one country at a time. A toggle at the top switches between all energy and electricity only. Clicking a dot in the country figure opens that country in the explorer, and the full table of countries opens under the third figure.

What stands out

• In 2024, wind and solar supplied more of the world's energy than hydropower for the first time: 6.4% of primary energy against 6.2%. In electricity it was 15.0% against 14.3%.
• The world's renewable share of primary energy rose from 9.7% to 14.8%. Wind and solar added 4.9 of those 5.1 points, and hydro's share fell slightly.
• Iceland, Norway and Canada barely moved. Sweden and Brazil, also hydro-rich, each gained about 12 points, mostly from wind and solar.
• Denmark gained the most at 16.4 points, followed by Lithuania, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK and Chile.
• Vietnam's renewable share fell overall, even though solar added 4.3 points and wind 2.1. Hydro lost 7.3.

Where the data comes from

The data comes from Our World in Data's energy dataset, licensed CC BY 4.0, and I downloaded it on October 1, 2026. Primary energy shares originate with the Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy and cover 79 countries plus the world from 2000 to 2024. Electricity shares come from Ember and the Energy Institute and cover 195 countries in 2024, of which the dashboard keeps the 128 that generate at least 5 TWh.

Primary energy shares use the substitution method, which counts wind, solar and hydro as the fossil fuel input they replace, so they are not undercounted against fuels that lose energy as heat. "Other renewables" combines biofuels, bioenergy, geothermal and smaller sources. Change is 2024 minus 2014, in percentage points. 2025 is left out because its electricity data is still incomplete.

What to keep in mind

• The primary energy series includes only four African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa), and the electricity view covers far more.
• Traditional biomass, such as wood and charcoal used for cooking, is excluded. In many low-income countries it is a large share of energy, so their energy mix is understated.
• Nuclear is low-carbon but not renewable, so it is left out, and countries such as France and Sweden would rank differently on a low-carbon measure.
• The analysis describes what changed and does not explain why any country moved.