Countries With the Cleanest Electricity Grids 2024

About This Dataset

Carbon intensity of electricity generation in 2024, in grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, ranked from lowest. A lower number means each unit of electricity carries less emissions. Covers countries that generated at least 10 TWh of electricity in the year, so very small island grids do not dominate the ranking.

Analysis

Ethiopia has the least carbon-intensive electricity in the world at 23.4 gCO2/kWh, with Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay and Costa Rica all within about two grams of it - a group defined by near-total hydropower on relatively small grids. France is the outlier that matters at 40.5 g, because it achieves that on 562 TWh, roughly 22 times Ethiopia's output and the largest system in this ranking by a wide margin. Norway at 29.7 g and Sweden at 34.9 g show the same pattern at mid scale. The spread from first to fifteenth is only about 62 grams.

Source: Ember - Yearly Electricity Data

Key Findings

🏆

Kenya leads in Electricity CO2 Intensity (gCO2 per kWh) with 85.20 in 2024.

📊

Average Electricity CO2 Intensity (gCO2 per kWh) in 2024: 40.63 · median: 29.70.

↔️

Gap in 2024: Kenya is 3.6× larger than Ethiopia.