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What you should know about this indicator

  • Each electricity source is tracked from the first year in which its global electricity production surpassed 100 TWh. For example, wind power surpassed 100 TWh in 2005, and hence the first data point (on year zero) corresponds to wind power's global electricity production in 2005; the next data point is wind power's production in 2006, and so on.
  • This means that year zero corresponds to different calendar years for different electricity sources. For example, year zero corresponds to 2005 for wind power, but to 2013 for solar power.
How quickly did each electricity source scale up?
Measured in .
Source
Ember (2026); Pinto et al. (2023); Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2026); Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy of the UK (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 30, 2026
Next expected update
June 2027
Date range
0–107
Unit
terawatt-hours

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Ember – Yearly Electricity Data Europe

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, imports and demand data for European countries.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on
April 24, 2026
Retrieved from
https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Ember - Yearly Electricity Data Europe (2026).
Most of the data is taken from the European Commission's Eurostat annual data.

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, imports and demand data for European countries.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on
April 24, 2026
Retrieved from
https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Ember - Yearly Electricity Data Europe (2026).
Most of the data is taken from the European Commission's Eurostat annual data.

Ember – Yearly Electricity Data

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, import and demand data for over 200 geographies.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on
April 24, 2026
Retrieved from
https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Ember - Yearly Electricity Data (2026).
The data is collected from multi-country datasets (EIA, Eurostat, Energy Institute, UN) as well as national sources (e.g China data from the National Bureau of Statistics).

This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, import and demand data for over 200 geographies.

You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document.

Retrieved on
April 24, 2026
Retrieved from
https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Ember - Yearly Electricity Data (2026).
The data is collected from multi-country datasets (EIA, Eurostat, Energy Institute, UN) as well as national sources (e.g China data from the National Bureau of Statistics).

Pinto et al. – Global historical electricity

Global historical electricity, from 1900 to 2017. The data was extracted from the supplementary materials of Pinto et al. (2023), "The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition".

Retrieved on
February 6, 2026
Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Ricardo Pinto, Sofia T. Henriques, Paul E. Brockway, Matthew Kuperus Heun, Tânia Sousa,
The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition, Energy, Volume 269, 2023, 126775, ISSN 0360-5442, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775.

Global historical electricity, from 1900 to 2017. The data was extracted from the supplementary materials of Pinto et al. (2023), "The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition".

Retrieved on
February 6, 2026
Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Ricardo Pinto, Sofia T. Henriques, Paul E. Brockway, Matthew Kuperus Heun, Tânia Sousa,
The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900–2017, results and insights for the renewables transition, Energy, Volume 269, 2023, 126775, ISSN 0360-5442, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126775.

Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy

The Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy analyses data on world energy markets from the prior year.

Retrieved on
July 2, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2026).

The Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy analyses data on world energy markets from the prior year.

Retrieved on
July 2, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2026).

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy of the UK – UK's historical electricity data

The historical electricity data in the United Kingdom comes from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES), published by the UK's Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Retrieved on
December 12, 2023
Retrieved from
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-electricity-data
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The historical electricity data in the United Kingdom (2023) comes from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES), published by the UK's Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

The historical electricity data in the United Kingdom comes from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES), published by the UK's Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Retrieved on
December 12, 2023
Retrieved from
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-electricity-data
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The historical electricity data in the United Kingdom (2023) comes from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES), published by the UK's Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • We use the World electricity mix long-run series, which combines Ember's Yearly Electricity Data, the Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy, and historical estimates from Pinto et al. (2023). Where data from several sources is available, the most recent source is prioritized.
  • For each electricity source, we identify the first year in which global electricity production surpassed 100 TWh, and track the evolution of global electricity production from that year onward.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: How quickly did each electricity source scale up?”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from Ember, Pinto et al., Energy Institute, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy of the UK. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260807-080945/grapher/electricity-source-scale-up.html [online resource] (archived on August 7, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Ember (2026) and other sources – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Ember (2026); Pinto et al. (2023); Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2026); Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy of the UK (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “How quickly did each electricity source scale up?” [dataset]. Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data Europe”; Ember, “Yearly Electricity Data”; Pinto et al., “Global historical electricity”; Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy”; Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy of the UK, “UK's historical electricity data” [original data]. Retrieved August 7, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260807-080945/grapher/electricity-source-scale-up.html (archived on August 7, 2026).

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