The power mix.
The world generated — terawatt-hours of electricity last year — and how it made them is the most consequential recipe on Earth. This report reads forty years of the global generation record, every source, every country, and finds a machine mid-turn: coal is still a third of everything, essentially where it stood in 1985 — while solar, at 86× its output of fifteen years ago, has just caught nuclear. And the mix is not an abstraction: it writes each country's carbon number, from 41 grams per kilowatt-hour in nuclear France to 1,000 in gas-fired Uzbekistan. Every figure is computed from the record at render time.
published 2026-08-27 · data cutoff 2025 (latest full year in the record) · edition 1 — updated only by a new dated edition · source: Our World in Data (Ember · Energy Institute)
Forty years of the recipe, as shares.
Every year's generation, normalized to 100% — the whole recipe through time. The fossil block still holds the top; the wedge forcing its way up from the bottom is wind and solar, invisible in 2000 and — of the world today. The white line marks the crossing everyone will cite: the year solar caught nuclear.
What runs each country.
The planet, colored by the source that generates the most power in each country. The pattern is geology and history at once — hydro where the rivers are (Norway, Brazil, the Congo), coal across China, India and Poland, gas over Russia and the Gulf, nuclear France alone in its color in western Europe. Drag the globe to turn it; the toggle recolors it by each grid's carbon intensity.
Each source, at true volume.
The same record in terawatt-hours. Coal's line never fell — it plateaued at a height the rest are still climbing toward. Nuclear has been flat for thirty years. And the two lines leaving the floor at the right edge are the story's second act: solar from 32 TWh in 2010 to — in 2025, wind on the same slope five years ahead.
The mix writes the carbon number.
Every country with a meaningful grid, placed by its low-carbon share (across) and its grid's carbon intensity (up) — circle area is generation. The correlation is the point: this is not a scatter, it is a slope. France sits at 41 grams per kilowatt-hour on 69% nuclear; the coal- and gas-locked grids sit at 600–1,000. No country escapes the line its mix puts it on.
Power is what development looks like.
Every country placed by its wealth (GDP per person, across) and its electricity use per person (up) — both on log scales, because the spread demands them and the axes say so. The result is the development curve itself: no country is rich and power-poor, and none is poor and power-rich. The curve is the report's quiet argument — the divide of the next exhibit is a wealth divide wearing an electrical costume.
A 163-fold world.
Consumption is the other footprint. Per person and per year, Norway draws — kilowatt-hours; Nigeria draws — — a 163-fold spread across countries of a million people or more. The ladder below holds both ends and the giants between them; the world's electricity story is still, for billions, a story about not having much of it.
Where every number comes from.
One dataset, taken whole. Our World in Data's energy dataset — which compiles Ember's electricity data and the Energy Institute's Statistical Review — fetched 2026-08-27. Generation by source in TWh, per-capita consumption in kWh, and grid carbon intensity in gCO₂/kWh, world aggregate 1985–2025 and every reporting country for the latest year.
Taxonomy, stated. "Low-carbon" on this page = nuclear + hydro + wind + solar + bioenergy + other renewables, as the source defines them. Geothermal is carried inside "other renewables" in this taxonomy (0.3% of world generation together with tide and wave) — it is named here rather than silently absorbed.
The correlation exhibit shows an association the physics makes causal: burning carbon emits carbon. The page still labels it as what the data shows — a correlation computed from two published columns, country by country.
What this page does not do. No projections, no cost claims, no policy verdicts. Shares, volumes, intensities and per-capita arithmetic on a published record — the record argues; the page draws.