Renewable Electricity Data: Fleets, National Statistics and Grid Time Series · Head-to-head
Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix vs Business Formation Statistics (BFS)
Which renewable electricity data: fleets, national statistics and grid time series data fits your job: Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix, or Business Formation Statistics. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix
Business Formation Statistics (BFS)
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix | Business Formation Statistics |
|---|---|---|
Entity | documented | not in this set |
Code | documented | not in this set |
Year | documented | not in this set |
Renewables | documented | not in this set |
renewables_share_elec | documented | not in this set |
solar_share_elec | documented | not in this set |
wind_share_elec | documented | not in this set |
hydro_share_elec | documented | not in this set |
renewables_electricity | documented | not in this set |
solar_electricity | documented | not in this set |
wind_electricity | documented | not in this set |
hydro_electricity | documented | not in this set |
Coverage, side by side
| Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix | Business Formation Statistics | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Global - all countries plus regional and income aggregates | United States national and state series, annual county applications, Island Areas |
| Temporal | Long-run annual series; world aggregate back to 1900 in the master table | Weekly and monthly series into 2026; legacy quarterly workbooks 2004 Q3 to 2019 Q1; county applications 2023-2025 |
| Granularity | One row per country or aggregate per year per indicator | One observation per series per period per adjustment status, from national to state level |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix | Business Formation Statistics | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Our World in Data, the Oxford-based research publication, compiling Energy Institute and Ember series | U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies, developed with economists from the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the University of Maryland and the University of Notre Dame |
| Subject lens | Energy transition benchmark: renewable share of electricity generation plus solar, wind and hydro shares and generation by country | Economic vital sign: weekly, monthly and annual counts of new US business applications and formations |
| Unit of analysis | One row per country or aggregate per year per indicator | One observation per series per period per adjustment status, from national to state level |
| Documented fields | 6 columns in the chart-export shape, with the master table exposing roughly 130 indicators; verified during research | 7 fields across series codes, categories, adjustment flags and values; verified during research |
| Geographic coverage | Global - all countries plus regional and income aggregates | United States national and state series, annual county applications, Island Areas |
| Temporal coverage | Long-run annual series; world aggregate back to 1900 in the master table | Weekly and monthly series into 2026; legacy quarterly workbooks 2004 Q3 to 2019 Q1; county applications 2023-2025 |
| Signature fields | `Entity`, `Code`, `Year`, `Renewables`, `renewables_share_elec`, `solar_electricity` | `cell_value`, `data_type_code`, `category_code`, `seasonally_adj`, `time`, `time_slot_id` |
| Formats delivered | Chart-level exports plus the full master table as CSV, XLSX and JSON | XLSX workbooks with SA and NSA worksheets, plus machine-readable time series |
| Best for | Cross-country decarbonization benchmarks, century-scale trend charts, citation-grade research | Nowcasting US firm creation, leading-indicator models, territory and county screening, NAICS-cut formation analysis |
What each does better
Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix
Depth, breadth and citability.
Depth first: the world series runs to 1900, which means a century of electrification history sits in one filterable column. No other record in this slice lets you chart the long arc of how economies powered themselves - coal's rise, hydro's mid-century spread, solar's post-2010 climb - without stitching archives together.
Breadth second: every country plus regional and income aggregates, in one consistent shape. A cross-country benchmark across 40 economies is a pivot, not a procurement project, and the aggregates arrive with their own blank-coded rows so nobody accidentally sums ASEAN into a country total.
Shape third: the columns describe themselves. solar_share_elec needs no codebook; the chart-ready percentages drop straight into a deck or a dashboard. For citation-grade research, teaching materials and ESG baseline work, this is the record reviewers recognize on sight - and recognition is worth more than novelty when the deliverable has to survive scrutiny.
Business Formation Statistics
Frequency, forward-readiness and honesty about breaks.
Frequency: weekly counts make this the fastest systematic read anyone keeps on US firm creation. When a shock hits, applications respond within days - long before employment, output or any electricity statistic registers anything.
Forward-readiness: applications precede formations, formations precede hiring, hiring precedes demand. Economists at the Federal Reserve Board helped design the series precisely to be read as a leading indicator, and the high-propensity HBA cut isolates the applications most likely to become payroll employers. For sales-growth teams sizing territories or analysts nowcasting activity, that lead time is the entire point.
Honesty about breaks: the 2022 NAICS restatement and the January 2026 exclusion of internet-sales applications from HBA and CBA are applied consistently across the whole history, with annual revisions folded in from Business Dynamics Statistics. Comparability is engineered in, not hoped for. The county-level annual applications covering 2023-2025 add a substate layer the monthly series does not offer.
Where they're equivalent
In provenance posture and in tidiness.
Both descend from institutional statistical work rather than commercial aggregation: one from Our World in Data's research group compiling Energy Institute and Ember series into long-run country tables, the other from the Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies built with academic and Federal Reserve economists. Neither is a vendor's repackaging of somebody else's press releases.
Both ship as long-format tables keyed by geography and period - no pivots embedded in cells, no merged headers, no document wrangling between you and the numbers. Both carry fully verified field dictionaries. And both score 8/10, which the rubric reads the same way in both cases: excellent records whose limitations are about scope, not care.
One more equivalence worth naming: the only geography where the two can even be set side by side is the United States. Everywhere else OWID stands alone; within the US, they finally speak.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - the question decides, not the leaderboard.
Reach for Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix when the unit of analysis is a country-year and the question is comparative: which economies decarbonized fastest, how the global renewables share moved from under 20 percent to about a third, what hydro-to-solar substitution looks like over decades. Academics, journalists and strategy teams building benchmarks get the most from it.
Reach for Business Formation Statistics (BFS) when the unit of analysis is a moment in the US business cycle: nowcasting entrepreneurial activity, timing territory investment off application surges, cutting formation intent by NAICS industry, screening counties by new-firm appetite. Investors and quants reading leading indicators, and sales-growth teams allocating effort, get the most from it.
The honest tiebreaker: if your deliverable mentions countries, decades or the grid, start with OWID; if it mentions weeks, applications or the US economy, start with BFS. Both carry 8/10 against this slice's 8.00 average - neither dominates, they bracket the problem. See best renewable electricity datasets for where each ranks in the full slice.
Sample both, pick by fit. See Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix · See Business Formation Statistics
Or take both in one feed
Yes - as cause and consequence, joined on US geography and year.
The pairing answers a question neither record can ask alone: does firm formation anticipate the energy transition? Aggregate BFS to state-year (or take the annual county applications directly), pull OWID's United States renewables_share_elec and generation series for the matching years, and test whether application surges in construction, utilities or professional services lead the capacity build-out that shows up in the generation statistics years later. The direction of the lag is the finding.
Reconcile on three seams. Grain: BFS runs weekly and monthly while OWID is annual, so aggregate up and accept the loss of the weekly edge inside the join. Break points: the 2022 NAICS restatement and the 2026 internet-sales exclusion from HBA and CBA are handled inside BFS's own history, but any pre/post comparison you build across the join inherits those definitions - document them. Scope: outside the United States the join dissolves entirely, so treat international comparisons as OWID-only analysis.
Done properly, the merge turns two unrelated-looking catalogs into one argument: people filing paperwork today are the reason tomorrow's generation mix moves.
Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix better than Business Formation Statistics (BFS)?
Better at different jobs. The OWID tables win on reach: roughly 130 indicators for every country plus regional aggregates, annual observations with the world series back to 1900, in one tidy Entity-Year shape. BFS wins on tempo and signal: weekly and monthly counts of new US business applications, cut by series type and NAICS industry, read as a leading indicator of firm creation. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do Our World in Data - Renewable Energy & Electricity Mix and Business Formation Statistics (BFS) cover the same ground?
Only in the United States, and only at annual grain. Outside the US, OWID covers the field alone - BFS has no non-US geography. Inside it, OWID contributes the renewable share and volume of generation while BFS contributes application counts, so the join is a cause-and-consequence pairing, not a duplication check.
Which dataset moves first?
BFS, by design. Business applications are filed before firms exist, before they hire and before any of it shows up in generation statistics - the high-propensity series exists precisely because some applications predict payroll employers. OWID is inherently backward-looking: each country-year observation describes generation that already happened. Leading indicator versus confirmed outcome.
Can I join the two datasets?
Yes, at US geography by year. Aggregate BFS to state-year or take the annual county applications, match OWID's United States rows on `Year`, and correlate formation activity against `renewables_share_elec` and generation volumes. Expect three seams: BFS's weekly edge is lost in the annual join, BFS's 2022 NAICS restatement and 2026 internet-sales exclusion define any before-and-after comparison, and the join dissolves entirely outside the United States.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary - 6 columns on the OWID side, 7 fields on the BFS side - with sample rows for inspection before anything ships; the US geography-year alignment is handled in the merge. Or take both in one feed.