Ember’s recent Global Electricity Review revealed that wind and solar produced 2,435 TWh of electricity in 2020, providing almost a tenth of the world’s electricity. Wind and solar have doubled since 2015, when they generated 5% (1083 TWh) of the world’s electricity. Some countries are generating significantly more electricity from wind and solar. The global leaders are Denmark and Uruguay, which generated 61% and 44% of their electricity from wind and solar in 2020. Many countries across Europe generate around a third to a quarter of their electricity from wind and solar: Ireland (35%), Germany (33%), United Kingdom (29%), Spain (29%), Greece (27%) and Portugal (26%). The majority of the top 15 wind and solar countries are in Europe, but the list also features Australia and South American countries Uruguay and Chile. Many more countries now get around a tenth of their electricity – the global average – from wind and solar: India (9%), China (9.5%), Japan (10%), Brazil (11%), the US (12%) and Turkey (12%).
The big players
If you look at scale alone, China (728 TWh), the EU-27 (540 TWh) and the United States (469 TWh) stand out as the largest producers of wind and solar power. Together they are responsible for more than two-thirds of global generation. China has been scaling up rapidly, adding more wind and […]