Albania, Nepal, Ethiopia lead a growing club of countries running on renewable power

Five countries generated all their grid electricity from renewable sources in the latest year on record, and 64 got at least half, according to new data compiled by Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson. The figures describe domestic grid generation, however, not necessarily the share of electricity demand met without imports.

Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Iceland and Lesotho scored a full 100%, with Ethiopia on 99.97%, the Democratic Republic of Congo on 99.94%, Paraguay on 99.47%, Costa Rica on 99.45% and Norway on 98.85%. In all, 14 countries and territories generated at least 95% of their power from renewable sources in Jacobson’s wind-water-solar dataset, and 10 produced more electricity than they consumed. The table below shows 12 of the highest-scoring countries and the global figure; the data are mostly from 2025 and were published by energy think tank Ember.

The top of the league has barely moved in two years. The Independent reported in April 2024 that seven countries — Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and DR Congo — generated more than 99.7% of their electricity from renewables in 2021-22, and that 40 more generated at least half. The same seven are still there or thereabouts, joined by tiny Lesotho, while the group above 50% has grown from 47 to 64.

Nearly every country at the top owes much of its position to rivers and mountains rather than recent wind and solar deployment, leaving them exposed to rainfall and reservoir levels. The broader shift since 2024 has come from solar panels, which are carrying renewables into countries with no big rivers at all.

Countries generating 95% or more of their grid electricity from wind, water and solar, selected from the full list of 14, which also includes the Central African Republic and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. 2025 data except *2024 and *2023. Grid-connected generation only. Source: Mark Jacobson, Stanford University, Table 1, compiled from Ember and IRENA data.

Built on water

Hydropower supplies all of Bhutan’s grid electricity, 99% of Nepal’s and Paraguay’s, and 96% of Ethiopia’s. Iceland is the exception, drawing about 29% of its power from geothermal plants on top of hydro, while Costa Rica combines hydro with wind and geothermal generation.

Several hydro states generate far more electricity than they use. Paraguay produced 152% of its own demand, most of it from its share of the 14,000 MW Itaipu dam on the border with Brazil, which generated 72.8mn MWh in 2025 and covered 88% of Paraguay’s consumption.

The surplus is shrinking as crypto mining eats into it: Paraguay’s electricity export volumes fell 25.5% y/y to 6,202.8 GWh in the first half of 2026, the central bank said.

Ethiopia generated 108% of its demand as the 5.15 GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam came on stream, even as electricity access remained limited. World Bank data put access at 56.6% of the population in 2024.

Laos, known as the battery of Southeast Asia, produced 257% of its own needs and now exports about 80% of its output, while its own customers suffer power cuts in the dry season.

Generation is not consumption

A 100% score describes what a country’s power plants produce, not necessarily what its homes and factories consume. Albania’s renewable output covered only 89% of demand in 2025. It was a dry year: net domestic generation fell 4.7% to 7,468 GWh and gross imports jumped 26.5% to 3,375 GWh, statistics office INSTAT said.

When the rain returned in the second quarter of 2026, output rose 34.4% and exports jumped 55.4%. The swings can be violent: a drought cut generation by 36.6% in 2017.

Lesotho’s 72 MW of installed capacity is entirely renewable, but the kingdom imports more than half of its power from South Africa’s Eskom and Mozambique’s EDM at peak times. Namibia makes almost 98% of its electricity from hydro and solar, but that covers only about 40% of its demand.

Nepal is learning the same lesson in a different way. Floods this year damaged several of its hydropower plants, and India has approved exports of up to 654 MW to Nepal for 18 hours a day until December 31. Bhutan, whose rivers run low in winter, has taken a $160mn Asian Development Bank loan to build 310 MW of solar to cover the cold months.

El Niño tests the hydro states

Drought is the obvious threat, and this year’s rapidly strengthening El Niño is already putting hydro-dependent power systems under pressure. India’s monsoon has come in 15% below normal and its hydropower output fell 16.7% y/y in August, pushing coal burn up.

In Panama, hydro generation fell 23% between January and July, and thermal plants took up the slack.

Costa Rica has already been through it. The last El Niño cut the renewable share of its generation to about 86% in 2024 and forced power rationing; with the rains back, state utility ICE said the country recovered to 98.6% renewable generation in 2025. Jacobson’s compiled dataset gives Costa Rica a slightly different 99.45% WWS share, reflecting a different dataset and methodology.

Zambia, which gets most of its power from the Kariba dam, was hit harder: the 2024 drought left the reservoir so low that copper miners had to import electricity and the kwacha weakened under the import bill. Each drought adds to a lengthening disaster season of heat, floods and failed rains.

The sun catches up

Solar is changing who can join the club. Renewables supplied 33.8% of the world’s electricity in 2025 and overtook coal, on 33.0%, for the first time, according to Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2026. Solar output rose by a record 636 TWh, or 30%, to 2,778 TWh, and met 75% of the growth in global demand on its own. Fossil fuel generation fell 0.2%.

The world added 692 GW of renewable capacity in 2025, 85.6% of all new power plants, including a record 511 GW of solar, the International Renewable Energy Agency said in its capacity statistics.

Much of that went up in China, the world’s green energy champion, where wind and solar now provide 22% of generation, above the OECD average of 20%, and which is on its way to becoming the first Electrostate. China’s grid is struggling to keep up: installations of new solar fell 66% this year as curtailment rose.

The panels are also spreading to the hydro states. Solar already supplies 16% of DR Congo’s grid power and 35% of Namibia’s; generation from Albania’s non-hydro renewables rose 55.6% y/y in the second quarter; and Zambia opened the 136 MW, $100mn Itimpi solar plant in May. In Pakistan, a rooftop boom driven by households and businesses has cut LNG imports.

The Independent’s 2024 report cited a 2023 paper in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Exeter and University College London, which argued that “a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets”.

Two years of record installations support that argument. The world as a whole still gets less than a third of its electricity from wind, water and sun, but in 2025 it got more electricity from renewables than from coal for the first time.