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The Worldwide Distribution of Solar Radiation by Nation

With the upcoming international negotiations on climate change in UNFCCC COP12 in Paris, December 2015, Colin Hargreaves has calculated the total solar radiation (also known as insolation) at ground level for around 250 nations of the world. This leads to a number of key statistics.


 * Intensity - the average energy per square metre of the country. This is relevant as a country may have the largest solar resources but only because it is very large like Russia. The problem here is that high intenesity makes the collection of solar power far more efficient and practical while low intensity makes it expensive to collect.
 * Total Solar Resources - the total solar energy landing at ground level for a country as a whole
 * Total Solar Resources per capita - the Total Solar Resources per annum divided by the population
 * Total Solar Resources per $GDP - the Total Solar Resources per annum divided by the nominal GDP in US$ for each nation
 * Ratio of Total Solar Resources to Total Fossil Fuel Resources of each nation
 * Ratio of Total Solar Resources to Total Energy Consumption of each nation