Coal Share of Electricity by Country 2023
About This Dataset
Coal Share of Electricity by Country 2023
Share of each country's total electricity generation that came from coal in 2023, measured by Ember from reported national grid data. Covers countries that generated at least 10 TWh of electricity in the year, so very small island grids do not dominate the ranking.
Analysis
South Africa was the most coal-dependent grid in 2023 at 82.5%, with India second at 75.3%. Six of the fifteen countries here were above 60%. Poland at 59.7% and Serbia at 59.9% show how concentrated Europe's remaining coal dependence had become - they are the only European entries, and both sit just under the 60% line. China at 60.8% is the entry that dominates world totals rather than the ranking itself. Taiwan at 43.1% and Malaysia at 43.3% close the table, both economies where coal competes directly with imported gas.
Source:
Ember - Yearly Electricity Data
Key Findings
🏆
South Africa leads in Coal Share of Electricity Generation with 82.50 in 2023.
📊
Average Coal Share of Electricity Generation in 2023: 58.52 · median: 59.70.
↔️
Gap in 2023: South Africa is 1.9× larger than Taiwan.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Ember - Yearly Electricity Data
- Coverage
- 15 entities · 2023 · 15 observations
- Measure
- Coal Share of Electricity Generation
- Last updated
- 15 August 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2023.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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