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A database for identifying and tracking renewable energy embodied in global trade

Nature Sustainability (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Using more renewable energy to make exported goods helps reduce carbon emissions from global trade. However, current global trade databases often lack precise data on how much renewable energy is used to produce traded goods, limiting insights into how this is changing over time. To address this gap, we develop a renewable energy featured final energy account (RE-FEA) that quantifies final energy (electricity and non-electric energy products) directly consumed by end-use sectors. This dataset covers 145 countries, 163 sectors and annual data from 2011 to 2022. From the dataset, we estimate that the share of renewable energy embodied in exports over total embodied energy rose from 8% to 13% over the period. Cleaner energy exports are concentrated among high-income and upper-middle income countries and in light industry and material manufacturing. This dataset fills gaps in current Multi-Regional Input–Output data and can improve the understanding of how global trade impacts sustainability.

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Fig. 1: Overview of RE-FEA dataset construction and application.
Fig. 2: Changes in renewable energy and fossil fuel embodied in global trade.
Fig. 3: Regional trend.
Fig. 4: Energy embodied in exports by sector and by income group.
Fig. 5: Embodied energy trade pattern and trend.

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Data availability

The RE-FEA database, comprising three distinct energy account categories (renewable energy, carbon-free energy and fossil fuel) for both REX3 and Eora datasets, and geographical and sectoral mapping matrices used to develop RE-FEA database are publicly available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15826919 (ref. 53). Final energy consumption and national electricity mix data are derived from IEA Extended Energy Balances27 (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/world-energy-balances). REX3 MRIO table can be downloaded via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10354283 (ref. 28). Eora MRIO table is available at the Eora Global Supply Chain Database (https://worldmrio.com/). The transport allocation share is available from ref. 15. Income group classification is available at https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/the-world-by-income-and-region.html. Development stage classification of each country (region) is available at https://unctadstat.unctad.org/EN/Classifications.html. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code for RE-FEA construction and MRIO analysis is publicly available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15826919 (ref. 53).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (2023YFB3906700; Y.Y.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (42130712, 42121001 and 72348003; Y.Y.).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Yu Yang, Yan Cheng.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Yu Yang

  2. Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing, China

    Yu Yang, Yan Cheng, Xiaoying Qian, Siyou Xia, Xiaochun Li, Jiashun Xue, Lu Zhang & Haiping Zhang

  3. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yu Yang, Yan Cheng, Xiaochun Li, Jiashun Xue & Haiping Zhang

  4. Department of Geography, University at Buffalo-SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Jessie P. H. Poon & Siyou Xia

  5. Business School, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

    Yannan Zhou

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Contributions

Y.Y. and Y.C. designed the study. Y.Y., Y.C. and J.P.H.P. conducted the analysis and wrote the paper. Y.Z. and X.Q. provided guidance on methods and calculation. Y.C., S.X., X.L. and J.X. collected data and provided support on visualization. L.Z. and H.Z. provided comments. Y.Y. and J.P.H.P. supervised the study. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yu Yang.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Anne Owen, Christina Prell, Narasimha Rao and Daniel Scholten for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Yang, Y., Cheng, Y., Poon, J.P.H. et al. A database for identifying and tracking renewable energy embodied in global trade. Nat Sustain (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01614-9

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