Global Renewable Capacity Growth Screensaver

Installed renewable capacity is the maximum power, measured in gigawatts, that a country's renewable plants could generate. IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, publishes annual Renewable Capacity Statistics by country and technology, including solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal. It counts capacity as the maximum net generating capacity of plants that produce electricity from renewables, usually as of the end of the calendar year. One gigawatt is a billion watts.

Capacity is not generation. A solar farm produces nothing at night and a wind farm only when the wind blows, so each technology delivers a different share of its theoretical maximum over a year; that share is called the capacity factor. A country with a lot of installed solar can therefore generate less energy than its capacity figure suggests, and capacity is measured in watts while generated energy is measured in watt-hours.

Rankings by total also favour big and populous countries, so a small nation with a high renewable share can sit low. The figure says nothing about electricity demand, how clean the rest of the grid is, or whether capacity is actually running. Agencies can revise past figures, so treat the board as a periodic snapshot.