Energy Stats is a browseable website for exploring electricity-grid and energy-transition data by country. The goal of this site is to let you see the energy transition as it is happening in concrete data around the world. The world's energy systems are vast, complex, and slow to change. This is a transition that will be measured in years and decades, rather than days and months. However, through this data you can get a glimpse of the massive scale of the energy transition as it is happening around the world. While this site uses high-quality public datasets, it should not be treated as an authoritative primary reference: Source datasets can be revised by the upstream publishers, methods differ by source, and any summaries here are for exploration rather than formal reporting.

Data sources #

This project draws from data provided by multiple organizations. Because methodologies can differ, the site avoids directly combining or comparing metrics from different sources as if they were identical. In every case, we strive to use the most reputable and up-to-date data available. Our main sources are:

• Energy Institute (EI) — Statistical Review of World Energy: Primary energy supply and related energy-system totals. See the source dataset and methodology. Note that while the IEA is the key global source for primary energy data, their restrictive licensing prevents us from using it for this site. The Energy Institute is an independent and well regarded alternative source.
• Ember — Monthly Electricity Data: Monthly electricity generation data for 88 countries. See the source dataset and methodology. Note that data series from Ember for each country start at different years, and are updated on different cadences. In most cases, we use rolling 12-month data windows so that the most recent data are included, while avoiding the skewing effect of seasonal fluctuations. Also noteworthy, data from China starts in 2015, and data from India starts in 2019. These countries are large enough that global-level statistics can be skewed when viewed year over year over those time periods.

Primary energy: interpretation caveats #

Primary energy is an internationally recognized metric in energy accounting, but it can be easy to misread. This is especially true when comparing fossil fuels (often counted as thermal inputs) with non-fossil electricity (secondary energy, or an energy carrier). Because most of the energy in fossil fuels is wasted during combustion, the amount of energy required to achieve the same task (moving a vehicle, heating a home, etc.) is much higher for fossil fuels than for non-fossil electricity. This can make low-carbon sources appear smaller in “primary energy” terms than the value they deliver to end users. However, it is still a valuable metric for understanding the shift from combustion to electrification in the global energy system.

For an excellent explanation of direct vs substituted primary energy and how to interpret it, see: Our World in Data — What’s the difference between direct and substituted primary energy?

Source code and contact information #

The source code for this site is freely available under the MIT license, and contributions are welcome. You are also welcome to open issues in GitHub if you find a bug in either the code or the data.

Highlights of monthly electricity records and other insights are shared occasionally on the site's social media accounts. You are welcome to follow or interact with us on Bluesky, or the site formerly known as Twitter.