Who Makes the Most Hydropower? Ranked Every Year, 1965-2024

The world's biggest hydropower producers, 1965-2024 The United States leads until 1984, then Canada, except in 1997, the United States' last year on top. China takes the top spot from Canada in 2004 and now generates more hydroelectricity than the next three countries combined. Every value, share and total on screen is recomputed from the data at render time, never typed in. CHAPTERS 0:00 1965 0:46 1970s 2:52 1980s 4:32 1990s 6:12 2000s 8:18 2010s 9:58 2020s 11:25 2024 - final ranking Music: Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), edited. www.scottbuckley.com.au -------------------- DATA Electricity generated from hydropower, in terawatt-hours, 1965-2024. Energy Institute (Statistical Review of World Energy) and Ember, via Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hy... Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy 2026: https://www.energyinst.org/statistica... "Publishers are welcome to quote from the Review provided that they attribute the source to Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2026." Our World in Data takes the years before 2000 (before 1990 for European countries) from this source and later years from Ember. The Energy Institute is not responsible for and does not endorse this video. Ember: https://ember-energy.org/creative-com... "Ember content is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY-4.0). This means you're free to share and adapt our work - as long as you credit us." Our World in Data: "All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license." -------------------- METHOD 157 countries and territories and one grouped entry; the chart shows each year's top 12 plus the next one. Values in terawatt-hours (TWh), as published; no per-capita ratio, no smoothing. Between two years, bars and figures glide from one published value to the next. Most years last ten seconds; the video slows around each shock year below: about 28 seconds for it, 14 for the years either side (longer between two close shocks). The first, 1965, lasts five; the final ranking is held for 12 seconds. Excluded: aggregates (World, regions, economic groups, the EU) and 59 countries and territories that report only zeros. No year is missing inside a country's record: nothing is interpolated; a published zero stays zero. 9 series stop before 2024 in the source and are not extended (the largest: Ukraine, last value 2022). The source stops its USSR series in 1984 and from 1985 lists ten of the fifteen republics separately; Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan appear from 2000. For 1985-1991 the USSR is therefore RECOMPOSED as the source's CIS total (which includes Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan) plus Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Georgia is in neither before 2000 and is left out, so the bar is slightly low for those seven years. Continuity: 203.0 TWh in 1984 in the USSR series, 208.2 TWh recomposed in 1985; no year is counted twice. The USSR ends in 1991; Russia and most republics start in 1992. For 1992-1999, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan are one entry, the rest of the source's CIS total, so the world total does not drop in 1992 (it never reaches a visible rank); they appear on their own from 2000, Georgia too. -------------------- THE RIGHT-HAND COLUMN GLOBAL BREAKDOWN is WORLD (the sum of all 158 entries) by continent (UN M49; the USSR counts in Europe, the rest of the CIS in Asia), with shares and yearly change. Before 2000 the source lists only part of the world country by country (the rest is in regional totals), so WORLD is 3.6 to 6.9 % below the source's world figure; from 2000 it is within 0.4 % of it. -------------------- SHOCK YEARS A year runs in slow motion when it is in the worst 8 % of the series for the fall of the world total, or for the share of countries declining (counted only when the world total also falls). Detected in the data, not chosen: 4 of 60 years, 1976, 2001, 2021, 2023. -------------------- FLAGS flagcdn.com - public domain. USSR: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. -------------------- CHRONICLE The events on screen come from an editorial file with no figure the chart computes: no generation figures in TWh, percentages or rank numbers. Each of the 60 years has at least two sources (133 in all) and a written counter-argument. An independent reviewer read every account, briefed to find what is wrong. It rejected 12, each researched and reviewed again (2012 twice): 11 were rewritten or replaced, and 1 kept its on-screen text. After the automatic checks, 1 more was rewritten. A last review on 28 September 2026 rewrote 1 account and set 20 titles in sentence case.