- Name
- Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption
- Indicator purpose
- The share of renewable energy in the gross final energy consumption.
- Abstract
- Renewable energy technologies represent a major element in strategies for greening economies everywhere in the world and for tackling the critical global problem of climate change. Several definitions of renewable energy exist; what they have in common is highlighting as renewable all forms of energy that their consumption does not deplete their availability in the future. These include solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, geothermal resources, and bioenergy.
- Contact organization / person
- Energy Unit
- Unit of measure
- Percentage (%)
- Other characteristics
- This indicator focuses on the amount of renewable energy consumed rather than the capacity for renewable energy production, which cannot always be fully utilized. By focusing on consumption by the end user, it avoids the distortions caused by the fact that conventional energy sources are subject to significant energy losses along the production chain.
- Classification used
- Renewable energy consumption includes consumption of energy derived from: hydro, solid biofuels, wind, solar, liquid biofuels, biogas, geothermal, marine and waste. Total final energy consumption is calculated from national balances and statistics as total final consumption minus non-energy use.
- Disaggregation
- Disaggregation of the data on consumption of renewable energy, e.g. by resource and end-use sector, could provide insights into other dimensions of the goal, such as affordability and reliability. For solar energy, it may also be of interest to disaggregate between grid and off-grid capacity.
- Key statistical concepts
- This indicator is based on the development of comprehensive energy statistics across supply and demand for all energy sources – statistics used to produce a national energy balance. Internationally agreed methodologies for energy statistics are described in the “International Recommendations on Energy Statistics”. Once a national energy balance is developed, the indicator can be calculated by dividing final energy consumption from all renewable sources by total final energy consumption.
- Recommended uses
- This indicator can be used to measure the percentage of final consumption of energy that is derived from renewable resources.
- Other comments
- Methodological challenges associated with defining and measuring renewable energy are more fully described the Global Tracking Framework (IEA and World Bank, 2013) Chapter 4, Section 1, page 194-200. Data for traditional use of solid biofuels are generally scarce globally, and developing capacity in tracking such energy use, including developing national level surveys, is essential for sound global energy tracking.
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Baseline
- 34% (2010)
- Target 2020
- 45%
- Target 2030
- 65%
