Shares of electricity generation in four countries

Shares of electricity generating technologies in four sample countries. “Fossils” include coal, oil, gas and peat. “Clean” includes renewables (inc. hydro) and nuclear. Data from World Bank/IEA statistics.

Might want to see this as well:

Total electricity generated, kWh


And, of course, there’s this:

CO2 emissions per capita

About J. M. Korhonen

as himself
This entry was posted in Nuclear energy & weapons, Uncategorized and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Shares of electricity generation in four countries

  1. Some notable conclusions:

    1. Check out the slope of the increase in clean energy production. French nuclear energy program ran from about 1975 to about 1990; the German & Danish renewable energy programs started in around 1990.
    2. The lower graph shows that nuclear leads to lower per capita emissions compared to renewables push both when electricity demand grows very significantly (see France vs. Germany) and when electricity demand stays almost stable (contrast Sweden and Denmark).
    3. The results, i.e. CO2 emissions per capita, show that France and Sweden are at or below Chinese levels even when using much more energy.
    4. In the end, it really matters how we produce energy. This holds irrespective of whether one thinks the French/Swedish consumption patterns are unsustainable or not; even then, they manage to produce their energy with considerably smaller environmental footprint*.

    * Disclaimer: I’m well aware that CO2 emissions do not capture the entire environmental footprint. However, other sources and some years spent evaluating environmental footprints lead me to believe that the footprint from French/Swedish solution is significantly lower than that from the German/Danish one.

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