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Let's head to electricitymaps.com !
Albania (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min...)
- On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which generates 22% of its electricity from gas. Interestingly, Albania exports about as much to Montenegro as it imports from Greece.
Bhutan:
- 100% hydro, makes perfect sense
Nepal:
- 98% hydro, a bit of solar for good measure
Iceland:
- 70% hydro, 30% geo
Paraguay:
- 99,9% hydro
Ethiopia:
- 96,4% hydro
DRC
- 99.6% hydro
So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!
(I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)
Being powered almost entirely by hydro means that the system is highly susceptible to droughts, so then they either have to spin up those oil plants from time to time or import electricity from abroad. I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. The country used to have its own oil power plant that it heavily relied on before that decision, which slowly produced less and less until it was shut down for good in 2007. Some images of it from 2019: https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-po...
I wonder how many other countries are increasing non-renewable output?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Sri_...
Why do you think it is worth pointing this out?
It's helpful to know that there are economics and environmental concerns outside of an existential threat, to galvanize a country's momentum.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project#Fri...
“Use of Nuclear Explosions for Excavation of Sea-Level Canal Across the Negev Desert”
They were not destructive enough.
Brazil, a continental country, has more than 80% of its energy from renewables
Put the meme of Macron with an old picture saying Brazil is BURNING THE AMAZON
It's also a two-country joint venture, this time with Argentina. And again, Paraguay uses much less of the electricity than its bigger partner.
It is a relief that Environmentalists have decided that hydro counts as "renewable" energy! When I was in school, hydro was considered really bad for the environment, and projects like the Hoover dam and Yangzie River dam were "not helping"
But it's extremely renewable none the less.
But: 7 isn't the number that matters, what matters is that next year it will be 8 or 9. That would be worth documenting.
[1] https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/energibruk/stroemdekl...
[2] https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/norges-siste-kullgruve-pa...
I wrote about that in 2016, https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-problem-with-evs/ , and even though the situation has improved it has not improved as much as it should have.
This is quite frustrating because it is blindingly obvious to me that we will need to do better but given the profit angle it remains to be seen if these private entities will now do what's right for all of us. So far the signs are not good. Instead of embracing small scale generation utilities are fighting netmetering laws where ever they can (usually under the guise of not everybody being able to have solar, which is true, but which is not the real reason behind their objections). They're dragging their heels on expansion and modernization of grid infrastructure and the government(s) seem to be powerless to force the now out-of-control entities to live up to their responsibilities.
Couple that with the AI power hungry data centers and the stage is set for a lot of misery. Personally I think privatizing the electrical grid was a massive mistake. The market effects have not really happened, all that happened is that the money that should have gone into new infra has been spent on yachts and other shiny rock goodies.
What's surprising is countries sharing natural resources are among the pioneers, despite the geopolitical implication... like Ethiopia testing the Egyptian waters by building dams on the Nile.
There is solar on my roof. It makes about 125% what we use, but we import power from the grid every day, usually early am before the sun is up, or most days in winter.
In summer we are fully charged and exporting from about 1pm-6pm, with the line out maxed (at a pitiful 5kW, screw you Vector. New Zealand).
I’d guess Albania has the same issue when it isn’t sunny.
You're forgetting corruption. Many countries can easily go 100% renewable, but there is no profit for dictators/politicians to do so. Most of africa, or the middle east, yet you still have many regions without electricity or water, so that people worry about food for tomorrow instead of better governance in the future.
Sorry but no. There are several major issues with that if you want your power to stay on all the time. Storage would be needed which even for the smallest countries on this list would require over a years worth of worldwide battery production. And grid stabilization would be almost impossible and that's just for starters. All 9 of these countries are mostly hydro. The renewables in this case are almost incidental. Also these dams were built decades ago for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment.
Writing such an article without mentioning nuclear power is a sign of dishonesty.
Wind and solar can't live alone, since they only operate when nature wants it. Perfect match for hydro, but we don't all live in the Hymalaya. Most (e.g. Germany) burn gas and coal to supplement.
Nuclear is the only tech suited for decarbonation, and once you have it, you don't need solar and power because 95% of the cost is in the construction. Since you'll build it to sustain peak demand, wind or solar are just extra costs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
(This is the worst disaster, but could put Chernobyl to shame?)
Full list here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
And that's before you bring into the deaths due to climate change
But of course, good for them that they used their mountains / rivers ! All all power to them to electrify their economies if they have surplus ! And even better if they can use some reservoirs and pump to store, because it means they can diversify their productions by adding wind / solar and store a lot, until batteries of seasonal scale become more widespread.
Came to say that, every time you'll see a country running on 100% renewables for an extended period, it's going to be hydro, because it's the only controllable supply among renewables (with geothermal as well, but it's been so niche so far I put it aside, but I hope it will change).
Unfortunately most of the hype and investments go to solar and wind power, which fundamentally don't offer the same capabilities. (Solar is fine as long as you're in q sunny place that is not in Europe though because it can be predictable enough to be relied on, but Solar in above 40° North and wind are borderline scams at this point).
https://youtu.be/TsmlyqZJOug
Or then they talk about how some countries have miraculous levels of an energy independence and social services and then look at their total population.
Most data you find will be using data that's massively out of date and be off by at least 2x though...
I had another facepalm moment when I read about EU planning to go nuclear again. That would've been amazing and smart in 2015 - but now? Yeah, it's dumb af. And that's coming from a German living at the northern end of the country.
Going nuclear was sane in the past and sane now. If Germany wants to prove expanding nuclear is dumb it should try first to have lower annual emissions, while spending less than double the cost of entire french fleet.
France is the biggest winner in EU- it'll build both nuclear and renewables achieving deep decarbonization
In 2015, Germany produced about 650 TWh of electricity. In 2025, it’s around 507 TWh, a drop of roughly 22–23%.
Consumption has also declined, mainly due to efficiency improvements, higher energy prices, and weaker industrial demand.
Per person, that’s about 7,900 kWh in 2015 vs ~6,000 kWh in 2025. France is at roughly 8,000 kWh per person today, so basically where Germany used to be.
This happened despite adding about 100 TWh from wind and solar combined over the same period.
Wind is still volatile and hasn’t really ramped much in recent years, while solar is growing steadily, but mostly helps in summer.
And that’s the core issue. Solar output in summer is roughly 3× higher than in winter, so just adding more solar doesn’t solve those cold, dark winter periods without massive storage or backup.
To get back to 2015 production levels of around 650 TWh, Germany would need to increase output by about 30%. With solar growing by roughly 13–14 TWh per year and wind not increasing much recently, that puts you close to a decade just to get back to where you were, while 2030 demand is already projected at 700–750 TWh.
Given that Germany still imports around 70% of its total energy, it’s hard to call it a “facepalm” to suggest nuclear as part of the mix.
Also worth noting that Germany is still slow on smart meter rollout, with only around 2% of metering points using smart metering systems so far. That limits how much consumers can respond to real-time prices. During tight periods, this can increase reliance on imports and contribute to higher prices in connected markets such as the Nordics.
In all seriousness, thereis of course a list on Wikipedia of countries by renewable electricity production [1]. China leads here but also has 1.4B people and still has significant coal usage and oil and gas imports. But they're working really hard to wean themselves off of fossil fuels while still rapidly industrializing.
China does have mountains and has built the Three Gorges Dam, which is just massive and produces ~22GW. They're building a dam that'll produce almost three times as much power, the Medog Hydropower Station [2], which is planned for ~60GW.
The part that annoys me about a lot of developed nations is that they engage in greenwashing by simply exporting their emissions to poorer countries eg [3]. Let's at least be honest about what fossil fuels we continue to use and the emissions we indirectly create.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medog_Hydropower_Station
[3]: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/1533104...
- California: 83% renewable, dominated by solar
- Spain: 73%, dominated by solar & wind
- Portugal: 90%, dominated by wind & solar
- The Netherlands: 86%, dominated by solar & wind
- Great Britain: 71%, dominated by wind & solar
There's real momentum happening.
California's grid is pretty decently balanced. Solar isn't even close to 50% - so saying that it "dominates" is pretty misleading.
It's like ~30% solar, ~12% hydro, ~10% wind, ~10% nuclear, all other renewables ~8% (~70% renewable, including nuclear) -> ~30% fossil fuels.
Are you maybe only counting domestic production and not total consumption? Or are you looking at the best time of the year and not the full year?
Or am I looking at sources that are >1 year out of date and in one year they've jumped from ~70% renewable to ~83%?
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/daily_...
Today was 31% solar, 16% wind, 16% hydro, 6% geothermal, etc.
Some of the difference to your numbers will be seasonal/weather-related, but the pace of solar and wind installation is such that data that's even a year or two old can be wildly out of date.
1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66704
That EIA site cuts off in August. The same EIA report shows solar grew 17% from 2024-2025. You can plug in your own assumptions to the solar growth curve since then, as well as your assumptions about the natural gas curve given the ride natgas has been on since August.
EIA also produces live status on the daily generation mix[1]. 69% today was wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro. 12% nuclear, so some of this is whether you consider nuclear renewable or not.
CA's power generation may cost more, but the pricing (for raw power at least) should be a lot more predictable than those of us dependent on fossil fuels. Natural gas, for example, has undergone a ~100% price round-trip in the last 12 months.
1 - https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/daily_...
2022 - 48% gas power on grid
2025 - 25% gas power on grid
What insane progress.
By contrast, Georgia, which has to pay for the "disastrous" Vogtle 3/4 nuclear construction project, pays less than half that.
Remember: disastrous nuclear projects are significantly better than renewable successes.
You can get some idea of the BS that gets loaded in by comparing some rates from municipal grids like SMUD vs pg&e. Same supply, fraction of the end user rate.
Anyway, that is to say theres very little useful to draw on here in comparing nuke to renewable cost.
The economics are getting interesting cause now you can get a 2kw hr battery for like $350 and plugin 400 watts of panel into it and run at least a laptop and basics peripherals forever so the draw on the grid is gonna diffuse over time.
IIRC our rates are up ~30% since 2024, and our electricity prices are 5th highest in the nation. I need to underline that this is in one of the lower-wage states in the country, with few state-level labor protections.
Also: the finances on Vogtle were sufficiently bad that they led to a rapid run-up in consumer electricity rates that generated political fallout. First: two members of the Public Service Commission lost their seats to Democrats, who do not generally win statewide races here. Second: the Federal government has had to specifically loan money to the operator to subsidize consumer rates. The Federal government could equally subsidize California rates down to the average or below if it so desired.
Here is something real. South Australia electricity production averaged 75% from renewables last year. Wikipedia (for 2023) put it at 70%: "70 per cent of South Australia's electricity is generated from renewable sources. This is projected to be 85 per cent by 2026, with a target of 100 per cent by 2027." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Australia They averaged 75% in 2025.
South Australia has no hydro to speak of. They have a some local gas, but no local coal. They do have good wind and solar resources. To me it looks like the transition was driven largely by immediate pragmatism concerns, as renewables are so much cheaper than gas. The politicians make a lot of noise about it of course, but I suspect if they had a local cheap source of coal the outcome would have been different.
Their electricity prices are high by Australian standards - but they have to pay for the gas they import to cover the missing 25%, and gas is by far the most expensive form of generation in Australia. And they are paying for all the new equipment this transition requires.
The Dutch bureau of statistics reports 50%, of which a plurality (one third) is biomass. The Netherlands is also famously gas-dependent. Natural gas isn’t converted to electricity for heating and many industrial applications. Can’t quickly find stats on production here, but renewables are only 17% of total energy usage. Renewables without biomass are ~12% of total energy usage.
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/longread/rapportages/2025/hernieuwb...
and if wasn't for ronald reagan, the united states might have achieved 20% solar power energy production before the year 2000. [^3]
these are not new (two decade) technologies.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#History
[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#History
[^3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power#Development_and_de...
The Netherlands: 50%, of which one third is biomass.
As someone living in the Netherlands, I would love to live in energy utopia, but stats reported by people who can’t read Dutch government reports are usually wrong.
I just checked for NL and in the past 12 months it's 50/50 for electricity (fossil/renewable), with about 10% of the renewables being biomass which isn't particularly renewable.
For NL for example we import wood pellets from North America and then burn them. Yeah, not great. Essentially it's releasing emissions by burning 30-40 years of American forests, which might be replanted, and will have soaked up the Co2 around 2065. Therefore it gets to count those emissions as zero (renewable), despite having a full effect on climate change in the next half century which is critical. Not to mention there's a 15% roundtrip loss from logging, shipping etc.
Agree there's real momentum but these are misleading figures.
You can also see Texas (ERCOT), New York and a few other operators.
Right now in a dark and not very windy UK w/ 10GW of gas burners running the spot price for electricity here is almost £150 per MWh, but at 10am it was sunny with a brisk wind and sure enough that spot price was about £25 per MWh. Gee, I wonder whether the wind and sun are cheaper...
Can you cite this please?
Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all those countries except one are almost exclusively using hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on hydroelectric power but not in such great a proportion, it makes up for it thanks to easy and abundantly available geothermal power (which, though environmentally friendly, is arguably not technically renewable).
Other countries will have to be more reliant on interconnects, diverse renewable mixes and batteries. Luckily this is now almost always cheaper and more secure than fossil fuels and the trend lines point towards that continuing to be more and more true over time.
Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken but we are conveniently skipping over the denominator here at least in the case of Ethiopia and DRC who both have a grid that is only serving their full population at a fraction of the level needed to make this story one about geographical lotteries and abundance instead of one about poverty preventing them from access to the traditional carbon power generating routes to server the rest of the population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power#Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#On_Earth's_su...
However, given that there's no downsides to cooling down a hotspot other than, well, no longer being able to extract energy from it, geothermal is a bit of an honorary "renewable".
Actual renewables ultimately all come down to recent[0] solar energy, which will never deplete their source however much they are used. All the energy in wind, hydroelectric and biofuels has recently originated in the Sun.
[0] I say "recently" because fossil fuels are all also derived from the Sun, but their rate of regeneration is a bit too slow compared to the speed at which we use them.
We have a lot of uranium and nuclear is fairly renewable at least in the span of a few centuries. The waste issue is a problem.
Does this effect occur in lets say 10-20 years or is this longterm like 50y+?
This is due to the physics reality of the ground itself: Power of a Geothermal well will decay over time to a point where the well become unusable and need to be closed.
It is due to the fact underground water is rich in minerals and raw elements. This soup will slowly but surely cement the well itself and its associated underground.
There are techniques (similar to 'fraking') to extend the lifetime of a well but only to some extent.
If the topic interests you (and you can bear artificially translated English), a French content creator did a pretty good video on the topic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q4xZArgOIWc
Additionally, Geothermal plants can emit CO2 (even a lot of CO2) in some geological configuration.
All of that makes Geothermal (for electricity) a bit controversial as "Renewable".
I precise that there is absolutely nothing wrong about low temperature Geothermal energy for residential heating and we should do more.
Solar is powered by fusion of Hydrogen in the Sun.
I'd use the same classification for both.
Most of the radiogenic heating in the Earth results from the decay of the daughter nuclei in the decay chains of uranium-238 and thorium-232, and potassium-40.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiogenic_heating
Potassium is more or less distributed in the body (especially in soft tissues) following intake of foods. A 70-kg man contains about 126 g of potassium (0.18%), most of that is located in muscles. The daily consumption of potassium is approximately 2.5 grams. Hence the concentration of potassium-40 is nearly stable in all persons at a level of about 55 Bq/kg (3850 Bq in total), which corresponds to the annual effective dose of 0.2 mSv.
https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-...
Geothermal hotspots do not reheat by fission or otherwise at the same speed that we extract their energy (if they did we'd be in trouble if we weren't extracting it!).
As I mentioned in another comment, build a Dyson sphere of solar panels around the Sun and it will last just as long. Build an all-Earth geothermal plant and the heat will be depleted.
This is because using it cools the hole slowly and after a few decades (depending on how quickly ground water can dissipate heat gradient) a new hole need to be drilled a distance away.
Geothermal is renewable.
You are still technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
But if we follow that rationale, in a long enough timeline, solar and wind is also not renewable.
His past research was already cited by Leonardo DiCaprio on Sept. 23 2014, during opening of the UN Climate Summit.
“The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy,” DiCaprio told the more than 120 world leaders assembled. “New research shows that by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100 percent of the world’s energy needs using existing technologies, and it would create millions of jobs.”
https://cee.stanford.edu/news/what-do-mark-z-jacobson-leonar...
The 100% renewable papers by Mark Z. Jacobson were subject to strong criticism. Jacobson filed a lawsuit in 2017 against the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Christopher Clack as the principal author of the paper for defamation. In February 2024, Jacobson lost the appeal and was required to pay defendants more than $500,000 in legal fees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson
Jacobson is also very strong critic of nuclear energy. In calculating CO2 emissions from using nuclear energy, he includes carbon emissions associated with the burning of cities resulting from a nuclear war aided by the expansion of nuclear energy and weapons to countries previously without them.
Jacobson assumes that some form of nuclear induced burning that will occur once every 30 years.
General public does not know the scientists by name. When they say something, few people listen. When a famous person says the same thing, many more people listen. That is the world we live in.
I'll take DiCaprio or any famous person promoting a good cause any day.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1510028112
This proposal uses unrealistic assumptions, for example it uses "copper plate model" to model electric grid of United States - it assumes that the future electric grid could transmit electric energy without any capacity limitations and the buildout of this grid would be cheap.
The proposal assumes gigantic buildout of hydropower to be used as backup solution for the times when solar and wind could not generate enough electricity. To be precise: increasing hydro capacity by 13x, which would result in water discharges that would regularly dwarf historic 100-year floods and wash away population centres on America's major river systems.
With unrealistic assumptions you can get any result you want.
Mark Jacobson has done PhD research on the role of black carbon and other aerosol chemical components on global and regional climates, under atmospheric scientist Richard P. Turco - who developed and popularized the science of nuclear winter. Because of this I think Jacobson is trying to get world of nuclear weapons, nuclear technology and nuclear power by any means necessary, even if this means publishing unrealistic proposals.
Jacobson's push toward 100% WWS is not a realistic solution to decarbonize world, it's just way to give politicians and celebrities arguments against nuclear power. "We don't need nuclear technology anywhere in the world, because in future we will have 100% wind, water and solar power energy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solutions_Project
Jacobson should say load and clearly the truth: I don't have realistic proposal to decarbonize world, I just want the world to get rid of nuclear bombs.
Just because a country generates 100% of its energy from renewables, it doesn't mean that its enough to power the entire or even majority of the country. Case in point: DRC. I believe only half of the population has access to electricity. It's been a while since I've looked into continental stats, but a quick Google search suggests the situation hasn't changed that much in the last few years.
One state is considered to be fully 'renewable' if the means of transport (excluding Airplanes since I can't find a suitable alternative ) for land is done via electric cars
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas...
If climate has already changed so much that Russia's ports are no longer going to freeze, then green energy initiatives may just put us at a disadvantage since we don't manufacture most of the products. Solar panels, wind turbines, we don't control a lot of that supply chain which isn't healthy.
There are other advantages to renewable energy, but at the moment the USD benefits from oil reliance and transitioning away from oil while maintaining USD influence is an important goal.
At the same time, oil infrastructure does tend to have a lot of weak points, where renewable energy can be easier to spread out. Eventually I think it will be relegated to military and byproducts more, but for now there is an abundant supply.
And which libertarians are in favor of oil subsidies? I'd like to have a talk with them
[1]: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/Countri...
This map says hydro share is like 8%. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/JP/live/fifteen_min...
The only countries with <100 g CO2/kWh and >10TWh/y are using nuclear. Large scale batteries are exciting for the future but need more development. The 2 biggest battery investments in the world are being made in Australia and California, yet still produce 4x the g CO2/kWh of France.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/5y/yearly
If they're able to produce clean energy to cover a large part of their needs, then that's a reason to be happy. We can also hope their quality of life improves without having to waste as much energy as people in the US do. The amount of electricity, gas, etc, used just to heat or cool down houses... if they can be smarter and do it while using less energy, then good for them.
Why is it that those are reserved for ultra-big utility companies and I cannot buy those for my home or even my balcony?
Might be experimental and unavailable, but just for small orders? Come on ...
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/Countri...
Unless the point here is "if we accept rolling blackouts we too can go full solar"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
Bhutan: 99% Hydropower, $ 4700 GDP/person
Nepal: 23% Imported $ 1381 GDP/person
Paraguay: 100% Hydropower, $ 7990 GDP/personIceland: 99% Hydry/Geo, $90000 GDP/person
Ethiopia: 88% Hydropower, $ 1350 GDP/person
DR Kongo: 98% Hydropower, $ 760 GDP/person , 13% of country has electricity
Not sure how this is applicable (and in many cases: desirable) for countries that do not have significant hydropower potential or maybe want a GDP greater than $760 per person per year.
On the other hand, balcony solar power will be a game changer for the world, provided your neighbors won't steal the panels like they do the catalytic converters in my neighborhood.
Hydro, wind and solar. Hydro is often even more important because it runs more steadily than the other two.
Geothermal and nuclear are neither fossil nor renewable, they are their own category.
The best way to go green is still going green yourself. Get some panels, batery, inverter and go where no government wants you to go, off-grid. (And a gas generator, too, just in case...)