Each source as a share of primary energy consumption, across 188 countries from 1990 to 2024. Switch between individual sources and the fossil and low-carbon aggregates.
Each source as a percentage of primary energy consumption, covering all energy use including transport, heating and industry rather than electricity alone. Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review, via Our World in Data. Nuclear is derived as low-carbon energy minus renewables. Traditional biomass is excluded, which understates energy use in lower-income countries. Coverage is limited to the countries the Energy Institute surveys.
This is the distinction that matters most for reading these figures correctly.
Primary energy covers everything: electricity, but also transport fuel, industrial heat, and domestic heating. Electricity is only around a fifth of final energy use in most countries.
Renewables look far better in electricity statistics than in primary energy statistics, and the gap is not a presentational quirk. It is the size of the remaining problem. A country can generate half its electricity from wind and solar while still running its lorries, its steel plants, and its winter heating on fossil fuels.
Headlines about renewable milestones almost always cite the electricity figure. This map uses the harder measure.
Hover shows the whole mix. Whichever source you have selected, the panel lists all seven plus the low-carbon total for that country, so you can see the full composition rather than one slice.
Low-carbon is not the same as renewable. Low-carbon includes nuclear. France’s high low-carbon share is almost entirely nuclear; Norway’s is almost entirely hydro. Two very different energy systems produce a similar headline number.
Solar and wind use a compressed scale. Even leading countries sit in single or low double digits of primary energy, so those sources have their own colour bands. Comparing their map directly against the coal map would otherwise be misleading.
Traditional biomass is excluded. Wood and charcoal burned for cooking and heating do not appear, which understates total energy use in lower-income countries and overstates the fossil share in some of them.
Grey means not surveyed. The Energy Institute covers major economies; many smaller countries are absent from the data rather than at zero.
Nuclear is derived. It is calculated here as low-carbon minus renewables, since those are its only two components.
This map pairs directly with two others on this site:
My own work on energy transition and its determinants:
Data from the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, via Our World in Data.