Current Events: Clean Electricity in the World Today
Clean electricity is the cornerstone of a future with 100% clean power for all. All of the combustion in highly polluting, fossil fueled sectors like transportation and industry needs to swapped out for electric alternatives. But much of the electricity system itself needs to be transformed as well. There’s quite a bit of power generation around the world from fossil fuel or biomass combustion, and all of it needs to be shut down. In this section we’ll examine the numbers behind how much electricity is from clean sources, where progress is being made, and inequalities in electricity generation.
The direction we’re moving towards is to fulfill the tera strategy: generating terawatts of clean electricity to power the world, while following the climate justice tenets of minimizing extraction, while maximizing locally generated, community controlled power, and ending energy poverty. Understanding the amount of electricity that is generated right now, and the fraction that is clean can give us a measuring stick for how much effort is needed in the tera strategy.
In order to halt carbon emissions from electricity generation, all electricity must be generated from carbon-free power sources: solar, wind, geothermal, wave/tidal, nuclear and hydroelectric. The latter two are more problematic that the others in terms of climate justice concerns, so we separate them in the graphs and accompanying discussion. Some climate justice advocates want no new nuclear and hydroelectric power, but think that the existing plants should remain producing power until their scheduled end of life. Others advocate for existing nuclear plants to be taken offline, which would prevent generation of nuclear waste and reduce the need for uranium mining. Although much of the damage from hydroelectricity comes from the construction of the plant, the removal of hydroelectric dams can improve local ecosystems. The Elwha River in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state had its hydroelectric dams removed to improve the habitats.
Biofuels require combustion, so generate a large amount of harmful air pollution. They also use land that could be for food production. Since climate justice organizations typically reject biofuels as a false solution, we include it in a category with fossil fuels below.
Watt is the Unit?
A quick note on the units of measurement in this and the next few chapters: we measure the average electricity generation and consumption in watts. This quantity is thus the average power produced or used. This is different than most sources, which instead use watt-hours as the amount of energy produced in a given time. Often energy statistics for countries are given in watt-hours per year. But the number of hours in a year is a fixed ratio (8760 hours are in a non-leap year), so watts are just as appropriate.
The justification for this is given in the Power On… chapter, where we argue that power is more appropriate for renewables, where flows are continuous, as opposed to finite fossil fuels, where it’s more useful to know the amount and price of fuel needed to supply a energy demand.
Global electricity generation has increased substantially since the 1980s, by more than a factor of two. Electricity generation surpassed 3 TW in 2018, but this is not the total useful electricity. The electric power final consumption is only about 2.75 TW out of 3.25 TW in 2021, with the rest lost in transmission, distribution, storage, or usage in the energy industry. Power losses tend to be much less for renewables.
Average worldwide electricity generation in TW (= 1 TW-yr/yr = 8760 TWh/yr). Source: Statistical Review of World Energy.
Despite widespread attention to the problem of global warming since the mid-1980s, fossil fuels and other combustion-based sources of electricity have increased by almost a factor of three since then. Hydroelectric power generation has more than doubled, from a quarter to a half of a terawatt. Nuclear power is the only electricity source that has not been growing rapidly. Nuclear generation today is similar that at the turn of the millennium.
Over the last few years, renewable power generation has increased substantially. Between 1995 and 2023, wind has increased by a factor of over 280, and solar by a factor of over 2500. Together with other renewables like geothermal, renewable sources have become a sizable fraction of world electricity generation. In 2021, solar and wind first made up over 10% of total electricity generation. This percentage is certain to soar even more over the coming years. Ironically the fraction of electricity generated by fossil fuels only dropped a little between 1985 and 2023. Both nuclear and hydroelectricity have increased in total generation, but have not doubled like total electricity generation.
Global electricity generation by source in 1985 and 2023. Source: Statistical Review of World Energy.
Electricity usage
What are all those electrons used for? The largest source by far is industry, which consumes over a terawatt. Industry includes mining, construction, and manufacturing (including metals/minerals, chemicals, food, wood, and textiles).
Very little of the vehicle fleet on the planet is electrified, so only around 0.05 TW is used for transportation. Residential usage of electricity is 0.7 TW, and commercial and public services use a little over half a terawatt. The fractional power usage of each sector has stayed similar over the last three decades.
Global electricity final consumption by sector in TW (= 1 TW-yr/yr = 8760 TWh/yr). Source: IEA.
| India | 1.4 B |
| Africa | 1.4 B |
| World Total | 8.0 B |
| Region | Population |
|---|---|
| North America | 0.5 B |
| Europe | 0.5 B |
| China | 1.4 B |
| Eurasia | 0.3 B |
| Middle East | 0.4 B |
| Central/South America | 0.5 B |
| Rest of Asia/Pacific | 1.5 B |
Population totals in the 9 regions separated below. Source: UN WPP.
The world average per capita electricity generation (including losses) is almost 430 W. There is a huge amount of inequality in generation from region to region. In the graphic below, the per capita generation in 2023 is separated into 9 world regions. Such coarse regions are clearly an inadequate description of the world, but at least provide a glimpse into the diversity of usage and sources of electricity. It’s also important to point out that there’s no attempt here to calculate consumption-based emissions, e.g., from goods produced in one region and shipped to another for use.
The width of each bar is proportional to the population of that region. This means that the area of each box represents the total electricity generation. The vertical dotted lines in the background represent two billion people. Thus each rectangle in the background corresponds to 500 W/person * 2 billion people = 1 TW.
Per capita electricity generation by source in 9 world regions. Width of each bar is proportional to population of each region. Vertical dashed lines separate 2 billion people, meaning that each rectangle in the background corresponds to 1 TW. Data from Statistical Review of World Energy and UN WPP.
An animation of this data from 1985-2023 can be found here.
In North America, per capita electricity generation is nearly 3 times the world average. If electricity generation were equal to 1240 W per capita in all regions, it would require 10 TW. Large fractions of the world population, on the other hand, live in regions with less than one-fourth of this amount of electricity generation on a per-person basis.
The fraction of combustion-generated versus carbon-free power in each region gives insight into the difficulty of the electricity transition in each region. Europe and Central/South America each already get more than half of their electricity from non-combustion sources. The Middle East generates nearly all of its electricity from fossil fuels. The other 6 regions generate between 58 and 81% of their electricity from combustion.
Nuclear power is most prevalent in Europe, North America, and Eurasia, where it generates between 15 and 20% of electricity. Hydroelectricity power provides over half of the electricity to the rainy regions of Central and South America. Hydro makes up 9-18% of generation in all other regions except the Middle East.
There are a large number of renewable energy success stories not indicated in the data above. Costa Rica, for instance, generated over 95% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2023. Kenya has more than doubled its electricity generation since 2000, has expanded access to electricity to its population from 15% to 77%, and now generates over 94% of electricity from renewables. Bhutan generates nearly all of its electricity from hydroelectricity, with a trace of wind. New Zealand is over 87% clean electricity.
Wind and solar are the truly clean, renewable sources. The world average of these is around 57 W/person, which is not nearly enough for a decent living. Clean electricity generation must be expanded substantially, especially in the Global South, in order to end energy poverty worldwide.
North America and Europe are each generating over 170 W/person of clean renewables: solar and wind. These two sources now generate over 14% of electricity in North America, Europe, China, and Central/South America. Wind power is the primary clean renewable worldwide, although solar is growing faster.
The statistics above show a rapid increase in wind and solar electricity production, which are becoming a decent fraction of global generation. There remains, though, the colossal challenge of shuttering nearly two-thirds of the electricity generation on Earth that depends on fossil fuel, biomass or waste combustion. In addition, we must generate electricity to replace the multitude of combustion-based energy usage, for vehicles, heating, and industry, which we discuss next.
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