Ireland
6.969 TWh 2024
~22% of national metered electricity
Measured
The Power Archive · Annual Snapshot
How the world generated its electricity this year — by fuel, by country, and where the data centers plug in. Every figure sourced; every estimate marked.
01 · The year in electricity
Seven fuels, 2000–2025, compiled from national statistics. Scrub the timeline or switch the scale — the shape of the transition changes with how you look at it.
Electricity is not all energy — it is less than one-fifth of the energy humanity uses.
Log scale compresses growth slopes — coal's absolute dominance is understated in this view.
Ember's figures compile national statistics and fill gaps with its own estimates, including distributed solar and off-grid generation missing from official data.
Labeled "compiled": national statistics as compiled by Ember — not meter-by-meter measurements.
Oil is grouped into "Other Fossil" — it has no standalone band in this chart.
Source: Ember Electricity Data Explorer (2026-09-21 vintage), compiled. Method
02 · Trends
Seven fuels, seven panels, one shared vertical scale (0–11,000 TWh): a panel that looks flat is genuinely small next to coal, not rescaled. Solar’s curve is the only one bending sharply upward.
Source: Ember Electricity Data Explorer (2026-09-21 vintage), compiled.Method
03 · Sources of generation
Each band is a fuel’s compiled flow into total world generation — 31,734 TWh in 2025. Wind and solar have grown 171-fold since 2000, and solar edged past wind for the first time; drag the slider back to see how thin those threads began.
Drag to re-derive the flows for any year, 2000–2025, from the same compiled dataset.
Demand is not shown: at world level it equals generation by construction.
Source: Ember Electricity Data Explorer (2026-09-21 vintage) · compiled.Method
04 · Country comparison
The same twenty grids, ranked three ways: sheer scale, per-capita generation, or how much already runs clean. Switch the measure — the pecking order flips.
Source: Ember Electricity Data Explorer (2026-09-21 vintage); population Our World in Data — Energy Data (population from UN World Population Prospects).Method
05 · Data centers — estimated
Three modeling teams estimate data-center electricity on three different scopes: the IEA models the whole world, LBNL and EPRI model only the United States. The chart keeps them in separate groups — and EPRI's range includes crypto mining, which the IEA excludes.
†Second-hand figure quoted from the cited report — seeMethod.
National snapshots — measured and estimated
Ireland
6.969 TWh 2024
~22% of national metered electricity
Measured
Germany
17 TWh†~2022
≈3% of national electricity
Estimated
Singapore
3.71 TWh 2020
≈7% of national electricity
Estimated
Vendor context — not demand:Equinix 8.87 TWh · Digital Realty 11.65 TWh (2024) — TOTAL company energy, not data-center-only; not demand anchors.
Source: Based on IEA data (Key Questions on Energy and AI, Apr 2026 update) · LBNL · EPRI · CSO Ireland · Bitkom via Clean Energy Wire · MTI Singapore. Method
Method notes — plain words
06 · Methodology
Six datasets, two build scripts, one rulebook. Here is what each figure is made of, how sure we are of it — and what we refused to publish.
Data vintage: Ember Yearly Electricity Data (accessed 2026-09-21) · Population: OWID / UN-WPP (2026-09-21) · Page build: Phase 2 V3 · Built 2026-09-21. This text matches the build.
| Tag | What it means | On charts |
|---|---|---|
| measured | Directly reported by a metering authority or an audited disclosure — for example Ireland's metered data-center consumption (CSO), or a company's reported energy total. Never inferred, never gap-filled. | Solid rendering. Never badged. |
| compiled | National statistics as compiled by Ember — not meter-by-meter measurements. Ember aggregates official sources and fills gaps (distributed solar, off-grid generation) with its own estimates. | Solid rendering. Never badged. Always labeled "compiled" — never "measured". |
| estimated | Derived from partial data by a stated method — for example Germany ~2022 (Bitkom) or Singapore 2020 (7% share × Ember total). | Dashed + translucent + ESTIMATED badge. |
| modeled | Built from a model where no measured figure exists — IEA, LBNL and EPRI data-center demand. Anchors from different models carry incompatible scopes and are never compared side by side without their scope notes. | Dashed + translucent; the tooltip carries the tag. |
Badge rule: in-chart badges are placed only on estimated and modeled series. Measured and compiled series never carry a badge. Tags are assigned at module or series level — never per data cell.
| Dataset | Source | License | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hero figures | Ember — Yearly Electricity Data | CC BY 4.0 | compiled |
| Global fuel mix · 2000–2025 | Ember — Yearly Electricity Data | CC BY 4.0 | compiled |
| Country mix · top 20 · 2015–2025 | Ember — Yearly Electricity Data | CC BY 4.0 | compiled |
| Flow sankey · 2025 | Ember — Yearly Electricity Data | CC BY 4.0 | compiled |
| Population (per-capita denominator) | Our World in Data / UN-WPP | CC BY 4.0 | compiled |
| Data-center demand | IEA ·LBNL ·EPRI ·CSO (Ireland) ·Bitkom ·MTI (Singapore) ·Equinix ·Digital Realty | Mixed — IEA data is Non-CC (see note) | modeled (per-anchor tags vary) |
Ember data built by scripts/fetch-ember.mjs from the long-format CSV release; population patched byscripts/fetch-population.mjs. Data pulled 2026-09-21.
Units: all energy figures are in terawatt-hours (TWh). Per-capita figures use kWh/person per IEA convention — the sole exemption, recorded here — and TWh and kWh/person never share a chart, title, or lede.
A † marks a second-hand figure: a conclusion quoted from the cited report, copied with its scope note intact. We did not touch the underlying dataset and we do not re-derive the number. IEA figures are quoted under the Insubstantial Amounts rule — at most five numerical points, presented graphically, never downloadable. A leading ~ (as in ~2022) marks an approximate year, not a precise vintage.
Owner: the site maintainer (gzxultra). Ember publishes its Yearly Electricity Data release each April; this page is a static annual snapshot, so freshness has a named owner, not a hope.
scripts/fetch-ember.mjs, thenscripts/fetch-population.mjs.npm run build — every Phase 2 assertion must pass (BANDS lock, footnote wording, IEA point count ≤ 5, no silent zero-fill).src/data/provenance.json, andsrc/data/DATA_DICTIONARY.md vintage dates.Staleness is self-evident: the version statement always names the data vintage year, so an un-refreshed page indicts itself.
IEA "free product" data is Non-CC periea.org/terms — free to download, not openly licensed. This site quotes IEA only as small conclusion figures (≤5 numerical points: the 415 / 485 / 950 TWh anchors and the 1.5% / 3% shares), each attributed"Based on IEA data" and presented graphically. No downloadable IEA datasets; nothing a reader can reverse-engineer back into the underlying data.
Source: src/data/provenance.json (2026-09-21) · full dictionary: src/data/DATA_DICTIONARY.md