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See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the week” column.
If you had to guess which country gets the largest share of its electricity from solar, you might understandably toss out the name of a balmy island nation. Or perhaps you’d pick a country with swaths of blistering desert. At the very least, somewhere notoriously hot and sunny. Right?
Well, you would be wrong. The global leader is Hungary, according to a recent report from think tank Ember that pulls from full-year 2024 data and only considers nations that generated over 5 terawatt-hours of solar.
The Central European country got nearly one-quarter of its electricity from solar panels last year, leapfrogging Chile, which had held the top spot since 2021. Hungary’s win is no fluke: From January through October this year, solar grew to account for about one-third of power generated in the nation of 10 million.
It’s quite the shift. Just five years ago, Hungary got only 7% of its power from solar. Ember attributes the rapid growth to robust policies supporting both utility-scale and residential installations.
Rounding out the top five countries on Ember’s list are Greece, Spain, and the Netherlands. The top 10 is dominated by countries in the European Union, which is chipping away at coal- and gas-fired electricity.
To be clear, Hungary is not producing more electrons with solar panels than any other country. That distinction goes to China, which generates far more terawatt-hours’ worth of clean power than anywhere else, even if it only gets about 8% of its electricity from solar.
We’ll check back in next year to see if Hungary has retained its improbable title. The competition will be stiff. After all, the solar boom is a worldwide phenomenon.
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