Latin America and the Caribbean have a 28.4% renewable share of the primary energy supply, according to ECLAC statistics.

Renewable proportion of the primary energy supply

It consists of the proportion of the supply of primary energy that comes from renewable sources with respect to the primary energy supply of a country. This indicator is an approximation of indicator 7.2.1 of the SDGs regarding the share of renewable energy in total final energy consumption.

Renewable primary energy supply, energy supply, electricity consumption and installed capacity [A]

Of the total renewable portion of the primary energy supply in Latin America and the Caribbean, 12.8 percentage points correspond to hydropower, geothermal energy and others, and 15.6 percentage points to firewood and sugar cane and derivatives.

While the first of these last two figures represents an offer that does not require combustion, the second does require combustion.

Energy supply

Within each country, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras and Paraguay stood out (with 100% in this indicator).

For its part, Brazil covered 47.2% and Mexico only 9 percent.

Primary energy supply

It corresponds to the different sources of energy, as they are obtained in nature, either directly (as in the case of hydroelectric, wind and solar energy, firewood and other vegetable fuels) or through an extraction process (such as the petroleum, mineral coal and geoenergy, among others).

Renewable primary energy supply

It refers to energy from non-fossil resources with relatively short or continuous periods of formation, that is, its availability does not decrease over time.

In turn, this is classified into renewable primary energy that requires combustion (firewood and sugar cane) and renewable primary energy that does not require combustion (hydropower, geothermal energy, solar energy and wind energy, among others).

Classifying renewable primary energy into renewable energy that requires and that does not require combustion aims to differentiate renewable energy sources that contribute to sustainable development from those that do not.

That is to say, those energies that by not requiring combustion have a minor impact on the environment and on the quality of life of people at the time of their production.

On the other hand, the supply of non-renewable primary energy refers to that coming from fossil resources that are exhaustible over time and that have a very long-term formation period (oil, natural gas and mineral coal, among others).