From: ourworldindata
The chart below shows the share of final energy consumption (which is inclusive of electricity, transport, heating and cooking) derived from renewables plotted against income (GDP per capita, adjusted for cross-country price differences).
Here we see that at very low incomes, the majority of final energy is derived from renewables — this is predominantly in the form of traditional biomass for cooking and heating. With increasing incomes, we see that countries tend to shift towards more fossil-fuel based energy sources: this represents the transition from traditional biomass towards solid fuels for cooking and increasing electricity access. Continued economic development through low-to-middle and into higher incomes has historically been achieved for most countries through industrialisation, and as a result a dominance of fossil fuels within the energy mix. This is shown by the continued decline in renewables as a share of final energy.
As countries approach upper middle to high-incomes, we tend to see a trough in this trend as investment in renewables increases and the share begins to rise again. This progress is much more noticeable for some countries than others: Denmark, Austria and Sweden, for example, show this bottom plateau then rising trend clearly. Others, such as Canada, the United States and Australia show much flatter trends. This shape of trend is somewhat relatable to the inverse Kuznet's Curve: renewable share falls with increasing income before reaching a turning point where it begins to rise again.
