ATLAS · COMPARE
Emissions & Renewables
Do the countries running on renewables actually emit less carbon per person?
Watch whether running on renewables really means emitting less. The cloud tilts down to the right because the two move in opposite directions — that’s the shape of a weak correlation.
The two, blended into one map
Same data, a different read. Instead of one metric as colour and the other as bubbles, the two blend: each country is shaded by where it falls on both at once — so the map shows where co₂ per capita and renewable energy are high together, and where they pull apart.
How strongly do they move together?
Across the 203 countries with both figures, co₂ per capita and renewable energy move in opposite directions a weak amount — as one rises, the other tends to fall (correlation r = -0.35). That’s a weak pattern: the two are related, but only loosely, so any single country can easily buck the trend — a good reminder that a fusion view can puncture an assumption as well as confirm one.
Measured across the 203countries that have both figures, in each metric’s own scale. The scatter morph above plots these same countries; the dashed line is their best fit. Correlation is not causation — it only measures whether the two tend to track each other.
On the blend, you’d expect the most renewable-powered countries to be the palest emitters — and broadly they are. But the off-colours reveal the catch: some of the largest renewable shares belong to lower-income countries leaning on traditional biomass rather than wind and solar, so "renewable" and "low-carbon-and-modern" are not always the same thing. In Scatter the cloud tilts gently downward, noisier than you’d guess.
Who fits the pattern — and who breaks it
On the scatter, the rule-followers sit tight to the dashed line; the rule-breakers fly far from it. On the left, the countries that most clearly follow the relationship; on the right, the ones that most defy it.
| Country | CO₂ / capita | Renewables % |
|---|---|---|
| Burkina Faso | 0.27 | 71.4% |
| Fiji | 1.62 | 28.4% |
| Saudi Arabia | 18.5 | 0.1% |
| Oman | 18.7 | 0.1% |
| Papua New Guinea | 0.52 | 54.6% |
| Pakistan | 0.81 | 41.6% |
| Country | CO₂ / capita | Renewables % |
|---|---|---|
| American Samoa | 0.00 | 0.4% |
| Northern Mariana Islands | 0.00 | 0.5% |
| Nauru | 0.00 | 1.9% |
| Micronesia, Fed. Sts. | 0.00 | 2.0% |
| Iceland | 8.52 | 82.4% |
| Tuvalu | 0.00 | 5.2% |
Understand the underlying numbers
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GEOGRAPHY ↔ DATA
Try another pairing — watch the whole world rearrange itself by the numbers.