Renewable Energy Tracker

The Renewable Energy Tracker (RET), by the Platform of Action for Renewable Energy, is an assessment of countries’ progress towards 100% renewable energy systems: 

• It is driven by principles of equity & fairness, acknowledging differences between countries in terms of priorities, financial abilities, population size and common but differentiated responsibilities.
• It puts emphasis on rewarding countries that are performing consistently better than others across the majority of indicators assessed, looking at deployment in the power sector and economy-wide, investments, co-benefits, etc.
• It covers 60 countries representing 85% of total population and accounting for about 90% of total greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and GDP.

Download the report: Renewable Energy Tracker 2023

What are the key findings?

Countries are rated as Champions, Frontrunners, Moderates, Trailers or Slow-starters. As we are only looking at renewables, not climate action in general, top performers are not climate leaders.

• No countries are performing consistently better than others, leaving the Champion category empty.
• The top 3 places are occupied by three Emerging and Developing Economies (EMDEs):  Chile, Brazil and China.
• A number of EMDEs are doing better than advanced economies from an equity perspective: Vietnam, Colombia, Jordan, India, Mexico and Malaysia all rank among the top 20.
• A number of advanced economies are lagging behind and not living up to their capabilities and responsibilities. Five high-income countries that are members of the G20, accounting for almost 9% of global GHG emissions, are among the Trailers and Slow-starters: Japan, Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Italy.
• Despite the equity-based indicators, sub-saharan African countries are at the bottom of the ranking, emphasizing one more time the urgent need for significant funding from richer OECD countries to lower income countries.

Download the Data