Renewable Electricity Data: Fleets, National Statistics and Grid Time Series · Head-to-head
World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output (% of total) vs IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker
Which renewable electricity data: fleets, national statistics and grid time series data fits your job: World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output, or IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output (% of total)
IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker
Where the fields line up
2 shared fields — join on these.
| Field | World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output | IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker |
|---|---|---|
Value | documented | documented |
Unit | documented | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output | IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | About 266 World Bank economies plus regional and income aggregates (Africa Eastern and Southern, Arab World, Central Europe and the Baltics and kin) | World plus roughly 76 regions, aggregates and countries: China, India, the US, EU27 members, ASEAN, Africa |
| Temporal | Annual observations 1990 through 2021 | Historical 2000 through 2024/25 plus forecasts to 2030 under MAIN, ACC and Target cases |
| Granularity | Country or aggregate × year × a single indicator | Region × technology × flow × case × year |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output | IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | World Bank Data, publishing the World Development Indicators | International Energy Agency, alongside its Renewables 2025 market report |
| Subject lens | One ratio per country-year: renewable electricity output as a percent of total electricity output (hydro plus other renewables) | The whole renewable system: capacity, generation and net additions by technology, plus heat shares and transport biofuels, with forecasts |
| Documented fields | 8 fields, definitions verified during research | 8 fields, definitions verified during research |
| Geographic coverage | About 266 World Bank economies plus regional and income aggregates (Africa Eastern and Southern, Arab World, Central Europe and the Baltics and kin) | World plus roughly 76 regions, aggregates and countries: China, India, the US, EU27 members, ASEAN, Africa |
| Temporal coverage | Annual observations 1990 through 2021 | Historical 2000 through 2024/25 plus forecasts to 2030 under MAIN, ACC and Target cases |
| Granularity | Country or aggregate × year × a single indicator | Region × technology × flow × case × year |
| Estimated scale | Roughly 10,000–12,000 country-year observations | Thousands of series across the electricity, heat and transport topics |
What each does better
World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output
Width. Roughly 266 entities against the IEA's 76 regions — and the World Bank list deliberately includes the aggregates nobody else publishes cleanly: Africa Eastern and Southern at 33.2% renewable output in 2021, the Arab World at 4.8%, Central Europe and the Baltics at 24.8%. For cross-country panels those prebuilt regional and income aggregates save days of assembly work.
Length. Annual observations from 1990 give three decades of continuous history per country — a decade deeper than the IEA tracker's historical window starts, long enough to carry structural-break tests and pre-crisis baselines.
Single-concept discipline. One indicator, one definition, one number per country-year: roughly 10,000 to 12,000 observations in total, small enough that the whole series fits in a file under 1 MB. Nothing to configure, nothing to aggregate, and because the series lives inside the World Development Indicators, it joins to any other indicator under the same country-year key — GDP, emissions, access to electricity — without a mapping table.
IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker
Technology resolution. The World Bank panel tells you that the share moved; the IEA cube tells you what moved it. Capacity and generation break out by hydropower, onshore wind, offshore wind, solar PV, CSP, bioenergy, geothermal and ocean, with net additions isolating each technology's build rate for the year.
A future. Every headline figure exists in three versions — MAIN case, ACC accelerated case, and stated Target. World solar PV capacity stands at 2,160.55 GW in 2024; the main case carries it to 5,706.33 GW by 2030, better than a doubling in six years, with roughly 4,605 GW of forecast net additions across renewables to 2030.
Scope beyond the plug. Renewable heat consumption and shares, and transport biofuels down to ethanol, renewable diesel, biodiesel, biojet and marine biodiesel, ride in the same cube — the sectors the electricity-only share never sees. And its history runs to 2024/25 where the World Bank vintage stops at 2021, including the headline it shares with the panel: renewables were 31.96% of world power generation in 2024.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both — they are not competing editions of one statistic, they are the summary and the ledger behind it.
Take World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output (% of total) if the question is comparative and national. Benchmarking 266 economies' renewable shares, emerging-market screens that need the prebuilt Africa, Arab World or Europe-and-Central-Asia aggregates, decade-long econometrics on the energy transition, or any model that wants the share as one clean regressor joined to the rest of the World Development Indicators.
Take IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker if the question names a technology or a year ahead.
Either way, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly — your call.
Sample both, pick by fit. See World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output · See IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker
Or take both in one feed
Yes — as scoreboard and engine room. A defensible workflow: let the World Bank panel set the cross-country scoreboard, 1990 to 2021, ranking economies on achieved renewable share; then open the IEA cube to explain the leaders and test the future, since its technology-by-flow detail shows whether a high share rests on legacy hydro or recent solar, and its case columns project each leader to 2030.
Three seams decide whether the merge holds. First, entity sets: roughly 266 World Bank economies against 76 IEA regions means the join happens on a common subset, with aggregates matched by name rather than code. Second, clocks: the panel ends in 2021 while the tracker's history reaches 2024/25, so align on overlapping years before comparing levels. Third, units: percent of output against GW and TWh — convert before any arithmetic. Do that, and one feed carries both the thirty-year record and the six-year forecast. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is World Bank — Renewable Electricity Output (% of total) better than IEA Renewables Data Explorer / Renewable Energy Progress Tracker?
Different instruments, both well made — the World Bank panel scores 9 of 10 on the Datadory rubric, the IEA tracker 8 of 10, against a catalog average of 7.81. The panel wins on width and history: roughly 266 economies, annual observations from 1990, prebuilt regional aggregates, one unambiguous number. The tracker wins on depth and foresight: eight electricity technologies, heat and biofuels, and forecasts to 2030. Choose by question, not by score.
Which dataset reaches further back — and further forward?
The World Bank panel reaches further back, with annual observations from 1990 against the tracker's historical window opening in 2000. The tracker reaches much further forward: historical series through 2024/25 and forecast years to 2030 under main-case and accelerated-case assumptions, plus stated national targets. The panel stops at 2021 in its current vintage. Spanning 1990 to 2030 therefore requires both records stitched on their overlapping years.
Do the two datasets report the same renewable share?
They measure the same concept — renewables as a share of power generation — but not the same vintage or span. The IEA cube reports renewables at 31.96% of world power generation in 2024; the World Bank panel's latest year is 2021, and its figures were compiled from IEA energy statistics accessed in March 2025. Treat them as one measure seen from two vintages: aligned on overlapping years they tell one story, and past 2021 only the tracker speaks.
Which one should an emerging-markets analyst sample first?
The World Bank panel. Its roughly 266 entities include the regional and income aggregates — Africa Eastern and Southern at 33.2% renewable output in 2021, the Arab World at 4.8%, Central Europe and the Baltics at 24.8% — that frontier-market screening needs, and the series joins to every other World Development Indicator on the same country-year key. Move to the IEA cube once a specific market's technology mix, build rate or 2030 path becomes the question.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Because the panel supplies the thirty-year cross-country record and the tracker supplies technology detail plus the forecast to 2030, the natural deliverable is one merged feed: World Bank shares as the scoreboard, IEA capacity, generation and case-scenario series as the explanation layer beneath it. Datadory reconciles the differing entity lists and unit conventions during delivery — daily, weekly, or hourly, your call — so the two arrive as one table rather than a stitching exercise.