> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power.

Let's head to electricitymaps.com !

Albania (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min...)

- On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which generates 22% of its electricity from gas. Interestingly, Albania exports about as much to Montenegro as it imports from Greece.

Bhutan:

- 100% hydro, makes perfect sense

Nepal:

- 98% hydro, a bit of solar for good measure

Iceland:

- 70% hydro, 30% geo

Paraguay:

- 99,9% hydro

Ethiopia:

- 96,4% hydro

DRC

- 99.6% hydro

So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

(I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)

I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in the whole country, and most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing.

Being powered almost entirely by hydro means that the system is highly susceptible to droughts, so then they either have to spin up those oil plants from time to time or import electricity from abroad. I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. The country used to have its own oil power plant that it heavily relied on before that decision, which slowly produced less and less until it was shut down for good in 2007. Some images of it from 2019: https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-po...

Nuclear seems to be the worst option:

You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar.

It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.

It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons.

It takes a long time to build and bring online.

It doesn't scale down.

Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?