The green World Cup

Forget the action on the pitch for a moment. With the 2026 World Cup quarterfinals complete, we wondered what the tournament would look like if teams were competing on a different kind of playing field: clean energy. Instead of goals, we ranked the final eight nations by the share of their electricity production from renewable sources.

As shown in our Graphic Truth, Norway is the winner. Ninety-nine percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources, primarily hydropower. Norway’s natural landscape – mountainous and with abundant rainfall – facilitates the country’s clean electricity generation. At times, electricity production even outpaces demand, driving electricity prices below $0 in some regions and effectively paying consumers to use electricity through discounts on their monthly bills. Yet, despite these green credentials, Norway is also Europe’s largest oil and gas exporter, exporting these fossil fuels while powering itself with clean energy.

Morocco, meanwhile, presents the lowest share of renewable energy production, at 24%. But that number only tells part of the story. Morocco also has the lowest energy consumption per capita in our lineup by a significant margin, at 603 kg of oil equivalent per person — about 7,000 loads of laundry — compared to Norway's 4,630. Wind power is the country’s largest source of renewable energy, and its green energy consumption is expected to grow in the years to come, with a goal of increasing renewable energy capacity to 52% by 2030, up from 40% in 2023.

The rest of the field reveals how uneven the green energy transition has been over the last 25 years. Spain, for instance, has surged from 16% of their electricity production from renewables in 2000 to the impressive 56% today. England (the United Kingdom as a whole) has made an even more dramatic leap, climbing from 2.6% to 52% over the same period. Argentina, by contrast, has gained only about 2 percentage points since the turn of the century. Norway has also changed little, but for an entirely different reason. It has spent decades hovering near a 99% renewable energy mix.

While football winners are decided in roughly 90 minutes on the pitch, the green energy competition looks more like a marathon. Norway takes home our trophy today, but Spain, England, and Morocco are closing the gap. By the time the next tournament rolls around in 2030, the standings could look very different.