Electricity Production from Renewable Energy - The Global Superlist
Category: Green Electricity Production | 22/04/2009 - 04:05:04
Renewable energy sources like hydro, solar and wind power now constitute a major part of global power supply. In this feature, Enviro-News looks how exactly how much renewable energy sources are contributing to the electricity production of a selection of the world’s largest and most eminent nations.
Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources
What follows below is a comparison between a number of countries, ultimately expressed in terms of how much of their total electricity consumption came from renewable energy sources during a certain year. Limitations on data availability means that the information dates from 2007, but our hope is that it will at least give an indication as to who’s doing what, and to what extent.
By comparing two sets of statistics (electricity production, against electricity production from renweable energy), we can establish which country derived the most electricity from renewable power sources, with Brazil emerging as the dominant renewable energy source user. The data does not include France or South Korea, as production from renewable sources was not available.
Canada and Brazil do stand out with more than 50% of their electricity coming from renewable energy sources.
The three highest electricity producers (US, China, and Japan) did not manage to create more than 10% of their electricity from renewable energy sources. The table below shows the world's top 10 electricity producers:
| Country | Production (GW-h) | Production from Renewable Sources |
Production % from Renewable Sources |
| US | 4,367,874 | 351,300 | 8.04% |
| China | 3,277,720 | 492,399 | 15.02% |
| Japan | 1,160,042 | 95,000 | 8.19% |
| Russia | 1,014,870 | 179,100 | 17.65% |
| India | 774,660 | 137,100 | 17.69% |
| Germany | 636,500 | 99,200 | 15.58% |
| Canada | 602,406 | 350,300 | 58.15% |
| France | 566,531 | N/A | N/A |
| South Korea | 439,984 | N/A | N/A |
| Brazil | 433,594 | 386,400 | 88.19% |
Renewable Energy Sources
Here’s a brief run-down of exactly what we mean by ‘renewable energy’, and a short explanation of its various forms. For energy to be considered ‘renewable’, two criteria apply. Firstly, it has to be supplied by natural means (from the wind, the sea or the sun) and, secondly, it has to be consistently available. Renewable energy comes from a number of sources. Hydro power is produced by the force of flowing or falling water, while solar energy is produced from the energy in the rays of the sun. A third type, wind energy, is defined as the kinetic energy that exists within the power of the wind.