Energy production – mainly the burning of fossil fuels – accounts for around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not only is energy production the largest driver of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels and biomass also comes at a large cost to human health: at least five million deaths are attributed to air pollution each year.
The world therefore is shifting away from fossil fuels to an energy mix dominated by low-carbon sources of energy – renewable technologies and nuclear power1. What does our energy mix look like today?
![](https://governmentanalytica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Our-World-in-Data-global-energy-production-mix-1024x723.png)
In 2019, almost 16% (15.7% to be precise) of global primary energy came from low-carbon sources. Low-carbon sources are the sum of nuclear energy and renewables – which includes hydropower, wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal and wave and tidal. 11.4% came from renewables; and 4.3% came from nuclear. Hydropower and nuclear account for most of our low-carbon energy: combined they account for 10.7%. Wind produces just 2.2%, and solar 1.1% – but both sources are growing quickly.
![](https://governmentanalytica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Our-World-in-Data-Global-primary-energy-by-source-1024x476.png)
Country Differences in Electricity Generation Related Emissions
Each country has access to various resources at its disposal to generate electricity and power its economy. If we look at a kilowatt-hour of energy for various countries we can estimate the carbon footprint based on thir energy mix. We will look at this in the next blog.
![](https://governmentanalytica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Our-World-in-Data-per-capita-national-energy-sources-stacked-1024x723.png)
- Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser and Pablo Rosado (2020) – “Energy”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/energy’ [↩]