Data

Average electric power of the world

The electricity the world used each year since 2000, expressed as average power in terawatts: the year's terawatt-hours spread evenly over its hours. From Ember's yearly electricity data.

Latest value

3.64TW

World, 2025 (preliminary). Version 2026-10-19.

Average electric power of the world (terawatts (average over the year))

26 values from 2000 to 2025.

Show as a table

Average electric power of the world, every value
Period	Value (TW)	Status
2000	1.74	final
2001	1.77	final
2002	1.84	final
2003	1.90	final
2004	1.99	final
2005	2.08	final
2006	2.16	final
2007	2.26	final
2008	2.29	final
2009	2.28	final
2010	2.43	final
2011	2.52	final
2012	2.57	final
2013	2.65	final
2014	2.72	final
2015	2.75	final
2016	2.82	final
2017	2.91	final
2018	3.03	final
2019	3.07	final
2020	3.05	final
2021	3.24	final
2022	3.31	final
2023	3.40	preliminary
2024	3.54	preliminary
2025	3.64	preliminary

Calculated by Environment Dashboard from Ember, Yearly Electricity Data (file of 2026-10-19), CC BY 4.0. Changes: world electricity demand divided by the hours in each year to give average power in terawatts. CC BY 4.0.

Notes on individual values

Partly Ember's estimate: the file has no 2023 demand for 1 of the 209 countries and economies with demand for an earlier year, and Ember's methodology says it estimates a country's missing years from its historical trends of demand and generation by source.
Partly Ember's estimate: the file has no 2024 demand for 15 of the 209 countries and economies with demand for an earlier year, and Ember's methodology says it estimates a country's missing years from its historical trends of demand and generation by source.
Partly Ember's estimate: the file has no 2025 demand for 116 of the 209 countries and economies with demand for an earlier year, and Ember's methodology says it estimates a country's missing years from its historical trends of demand and generation by source.

Where it comes from

Producer: Ember · Yearly electricity data
Version: 2026-10-19
File: https://files.ember-energy.org/public-downloads/generation/outputs/release_generation_yearly_global.csv
Fetched: 2026-10-25 (automatically), 16,118,558 bytes
Fingerprint: sha256 91d30fb170dac8a62130f7b39e11ecbb301f902e08400e9561510882eadcd701ETag "6a080b27c110a7f6a14c85675543d416" · Last-Modified Mon, 19 Oct 2026 20:26:55 GMT
Copies: Archived copy (Wayback Machine) Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer: Yearly electricity generation data, Ember

Producer: Ember · Yearly electricity data
Version: 2026-10-19
File: https://files.ember-energy.org/public-downloads/ember_electricity_data_methodology.pdf
Fetched: 2026-10-04 (automatically), 1,487,777 bytes
Fingerprint: sha256 67c5eaac3bfbeb7e67bb786f9ea9680f67f6f26e75318560562ee52d439de908ETag "9e4a04176b5b87901bdf0da81b05935b" · Last-Modified Tue, 22 Sep 2026 11:58:42 GMT
Copies: No Wayback copy recorded yet.Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer: Yearly electricity generation data, Ember

What was done to it

Read release_generation_yearly_global.csv, last modified by Ember on 2026-10-19 (Ember gives no version label, so that date is the vintage), and kept Area 'World', Electricity source 'Demand', column 'Generation (TWh)'.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/energy/ember_demand.py · code sha256 62080a6f510a4186… · inputs 91d30fb170da… 67c5eaac3bfb…
Checked that World demand equals World total generation (the world has no net imports) in every year, to within the rounding of the printed values.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/energy/ember_demand.py · code sha256 62080a6f510a4186… · inputs 91d30fb170da… 67c5eaac3bfb…
Marked a year preliminary, with a note giving the count, when the file has no Demand for that year for a country or economy that has it for an earlier year; Ember's data methodology (PDF last modified 2026-09-22, sha256 67c5eaac3bfb…; both sentences found on pages 10, 12) says it estimates the latest annual values from monthly data and a country's missing years from historical trends. Preliminary years in this vintage: 2023, 2024, 2025.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/energy/ember_demand.py · code sha256 62080a6f510a4186… · inputs 91d30fb170da… 67c5eaac3bfb…
Unit conversion to average power: divided each year's World demand in terawatt-hours by the hours in that calendar year (8,760, or 8,784 in a leap year), giving terawatts (TWh / h = TW), in exact decimal arithmetic. The result is the constant power that would deliver the same electricity over the year, not the world's peak demand.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/energy/ember_demand.py · code sha256 62080a6f510a4186… · inputs 91d30fb170da… 67c5eaac3bfb…

What it covers

Geography: World
Basis: Electricity demand as Ember publishes it for the world, which equals the world's total electricity generation in every year of the file (checked at each build). Ember reports generation as gross generation where it can. The latest years are partly Ember's estimates (marked preliminary). Average power is the annual energy divided by the hours in the year, not the peak demand.
Unit: terawatts (average over the year) (TW)