Sovereign and dependent territory rows of OWID’s “Wind generation” dataset (top 30 by most recent year). Values in TWh (two decimals). Aggregates excluded.
Chart ready. Press play to start.
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. “Wind Electricity Generation by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by Our World in Data (mostly re-published World Bank / UN public statistics) (OWID Grapher slug “wind-generation”). Values are expressed in TWh.
What to watch. Germany and Spain nurture wind power through the 2000s, then China scales it to roughly 40% of world output in little more than a decade. Denmark’s modest bar hides a world-leading per-capita story — and Japan’s slow climb is plain to see.
Caveats. Wind output varies with the weather, so identical capacity produces different totals year to year. Onshore and offshore are lumped together here, and small off-grid turbines may escape national statistics altogether.
Trends in the data
The left-hand edge of this series is almost entirely zero. All 30 countries read 0.00 TWh in 1965, and the first value above zero is Denmark’s 0.01 TWh in 1979, followed by the United States in 1984, Germany in 1988 and China in 1991. The leader in 1985 was Denmark at 0.05 TWh — wind power worldwide was then too small to register as a number. Few indicators travel from zero to this scale in sixty years.
The 30-country total runs 3.6 TWh in 1990, 30.6 in 2000, 337.7 in 2010, 1,529.6 in 2020 and 2,611.5 TWh in 2025 — a 725-fold increase in 35 years. Growth since 2010 has been especially steep: the five years from 2020 to 2025 alone added 1,081.9 TWh, more than the entire 2015 total of 796.4 TWh.
China stood at just 1.95 TWh in 2005, a fourteenth of Germany’s 27.77 TWh. By 2025 it generates 1,135.44 TWh, 43.5% of the 30-country total on its own — 582× growth in twenty years. The United States also grew 26×, from 17.81 to 464.39 TWh. Germany, by contrast, went from 27.77 to 136.03 TWh, a factor of 4.9; starting high leaves less room in multiples. Early movers and late arrivals grow in completely different shapes.
Denmark ranks 18th in 2025 at 19.21 TWh. Middling in absolute terms, that is extraordinary for a country of about six million people, and its per-capita and share-of-electricity figures remain among the highest in the world. Japan is 24th at 12.85 TWh, with Greece, Ireland, Chile, South Africa, Egypt and Austria below it. One caveat: wind output varies with the wind, so generation can fall below the previous year even as capacity grows. This is not the same statistic as installed capacity.
Trivia quiz
What device generates electricity from wind?
The wind turbine: wind spins its blades, driving a generator to produce electricity. (Source)
What is wind power generated by turbines at sea called, and why is it attractive?
Offshore wind: stronger, steadier winds and fewer noise/landscape constraints. It is expanding fast, especially in Europe. (Source)
Which Nordic country is famous for wind power, sometimes meeting about half its electricity from wind?
Denmark, also a leader in the wind-turbine industry and a symbol of renewable-energy policy. (Source)