Sovereign and dependent territory rows of the World Bank “Renewable electricity output (% of total electricity output)” indicator (top 30 by most recent year). Aggregates (region.id === “NA”) excluded.
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How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Renewable Electricity Share by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (World Bank indicator code EG.ELC.RNEW.ZS). Values are expressed in %.
What to watch. Learn to tell the two types apart: Norway, Iceland and Paraguay sit above 90% thanks to geography and barely move, while Denmark, Germany, the UK and Spain climb visibly through the 2010s. The moving bars are where policy, not terrain, is doing the work.
Caveats. A share moves with its denominator: a year of falling total generation can lift the renewable percentage without a single new turbine. High-share microstates and absolute giants like China (huge renewable output, modest share) tell completely different stories.
Trends in the data
Looking at who is in this table shows how much the selection rule drives the conclusion. All 26 countries with a 2021 value are above 80%, down to Ecuador at 80.95%. Because the top 30 is chosen by the highest value in the latest year, a country with a mid-range renewable share cannot appear in principle. Bhutan at 100%, Lesotho 99.79%, Costa Rica 99.37% and Norway 99.10% are not a picture of the world average; they are the top of the distribution.
Most of those leaders owe their position to terrain rather than effort. Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Norway and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all depend heavily on hydropower and were already above 99% in 1990 — Paraguay at 99.97%, Nepal 99.89%, Iceland 99.87%. With a ceiling fixed at 100%, these countries have no headroom left. Countries that cannot rise and countries with room to rise share the same table.
In that light, the one country in these 30 that genuinely “grew its share through policy” is Luxembourg: from 6.03% in 1990 to 89.04% in 2021, a 14.77× increase of 83.01 percentage points, and the only one to climb from a low base. Zimbabwe rose from 46.67% to 88.31%, Georgia from 55.21% to 81.37% and Kyrgyzstan from 63.48% to 85.59%. In rank terms Luxembourg moved from 21st to 15th and Costa Rica from 7th to 3rd.
Some countries fell. Nepal dropped 15.91 points from 99.89% to 83.98%, sliding from 2nd to 20th; Uruguay from 94.96% to 84.35%, 8th to 19th; and the DRC from 99.56% to 90.43%, 5th to 13th. When electricity demand grows and thermal capacity is added, the share falls even if renewable output is unchanged. The spread between top and bottom narrowed from 93.94 points in 1990 to 19.05 points in 2021, but that too is largely an effect of the top-30 cut. Denmark, Germany, Japan, the United States and China do not appear in this table — which says nothing about their efforts on renewables.
Trivia quiz
What are the main types of renewable electricity?
Hydro, solar and wind (plus geothermal, biomass and others) — all naturally replenished rather than depleted. (Source)
What is the property of solar and wind whereby output varies with weather and time of day?
Variability (intermittency). Storage, grids and demand management are key to integrating it. (Source)
Which steady renewable source dominates in countries with very high renewable shares, such as Norway and Brazil?
Hydropower, which can supply most electricity where water resources and terrain allow. (Source)
Source
World Bank — Renewable electricity output (% of total electricity output) (EG.ELC.RNEW.ZS)