No one man should have all that (green) power:
where do we stand in green energy production?

The map above colours the different countries of the world by the percentage of their energy production that is green. By using the slider under the map, you can see this for different years. Clicking a country and moving the slider also changes the detailed pie chart below.

Feel free to explore this map on your own, we'll highlight a few notable things about the map below:

• Globally, we can see an improvement in green energy production from the year 2000. The map is overall greener in 2021 than in 2000.
• Most of Sub-Saharan Africa has had a predominantly green energy production over the entire period, but some countries (like Tanzania) became less green instead of more.
• In Europe, a clear trend towards green energy is visible. All EU-countries have made their energy production greener than in 2000. But maybe this trend isn't going fast enough.
• In some parts of the world, like the Middle East, there are little to no improvements. Most of these countries still have an energy production mix that is dominated by fossil fuels. This is very likely because of the large oil and gas reserves that exist in these parts of the world, by which they have cheap access to these fossil fuels.

In the next two charts, we see the same data as in the pie chart, but now as an evolution over time. Hover over them to look at the details of different years.
Note that the areas are stacked on top of each other.

The left chart shows the energy sources as a percentage of the total energy production.
If we take a look at Belgium, we can see a positive change in energy production. We can see fossil fuels such as coal decrease and even disappear completely, while renewable energies such as solar and wind increase. We can observe a similar situation in a lot of Western European countries, such as the UK, Spain and Germany.

The right chart on the other hand shows the absolute value, in TWh. This way, we can not only see the evolution of green energy, but also the growth of energy production as a whole.
For example, if we look at China, we can see that the proportions stay relatively the same, but the total production increases rapidly.

So far, we've focused solely on the production of power. In this final part, we'll broaden our scope and also look at how much power those countries consumed. We will look at which countries have a power surplus/deficit, and which countries are the top energy production in recent times.

The first chart compares the Net Export (NX) of two countries of choice. This is the amount of power that is produced in a country, on top of the national consumption needs.

Below this chart, a detailed look is given for each country. By showing bar charts of the demand against the production of power, it is clear how the NX-line was established.

You can scroll on all the charts to zoom in and view smaller values more easily. Beware that this changes the values on the y-axis.

As energy is an important geopolitic asset, most countries will favour a positive NX. However, this is not always possible, often because of geological features. In that case, countries will need to import energy from abroad, making them dependent on other countries.

United Kingdom and France

One interesting comparison is the United Kingdom and France. They both are similarly sized Western European countries, but they highly differ in energy NX. France has consistently had a very positive NX (until recent times, see 1).

Meanwhile, the UK has permanently had a negative NX. This means that the geopolitical position of the UK is quite a bit worse than that of France. When other countries decide to stop exporting power to the UK, it is exposed to power outages, which can severely damage its economy.

United States and China

Another interesting comparison is between the United States and China. While the USA saw its NX decrease over the past years (while it was already negative in 2000), China kept its NX relatively constant over the same period.

Furthermore, China kept its NX at a positive level. Throughout the massive growths in electricity demand in the last years, China has been able to keep up with its electricity production to remain at a positive NX level.

In the chart below, we show the top-25 annual energy producers. By moving the slider below the cart, you can see this for different years.

The most striking about this chart, is the immense growth in energy production China has made in the current century.

While the second biggest energy producer, the USA, only slightly increased its energy production from around 3800 TWh to around 4150 TWh, China has increased its production to more than 6 times that of its production at the start of the century. This is of course following the huge economic growth the country has made in the last years.

In this chart, we can also see the huge difference in amounts of energy produced, even across the top-25 countries. The top-3 producers respectively generate around 8000, 4000 and 2000 TWh, while only one of the other country generates more than 1000 TWh.