What are the advantages of solar energy over other energy sources? Which countries use solar energy the most?

Solar energy has many advantages over other energy sources. Due to the vast deserts, the Arab world's most abundant clean energy source is solar, and non-oil countries in the region have been the first to take advantage of this. Morocco already gets more than 33 percent of its energy from renewable sources (the EU average is 18 percent). Oil-producing countries are also catching up, with the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and others building large clean power plants. In the past decade, solar power in the Middle East has increased from 91 megawatts to 9,000 megawatts, while investment has risen 12-fold. Analysts say renewable energy is becoming increasingly competitive. Solar power plants are cheaper, faster and safer to build and maintain than conventional energy sources. In the United Arab Emirates, new solar power plants cost about two-thirds as much as natural gas and one-third as much as oil.

Many government policies in the region are inconsistent. Saudi Arabia, for example, has made renewable energy a pillar of its economic reforms and announced plans to build the world's largest photovoltaic power plant, only to see the project run aground six months later. The turmoil in the Middle East is worrying investors. In addition, cheap oil has recently dampened enthusiasm for solar power in the Middle East - low crude prices have made it extremely cheap to generate electricity from oil, and the drop in revenue from falling oil prices has forced countries to put new solar projects on hold.

As the world's thirst for more energy grows and it becomes increasingly wary of the damage it can cause, solar power could be the answer: a cheap and endlessly clean source of energy. By ranking the 10 countries with the most solar capacity, you can see which ones are doing the best job right now, and which ones could do better.

Data from the International Energy Agency's Photovoltaic Trends report shows that while their survey only goes back to 2014, it's the most recent data available. (What this data tells us is who produces the most raw solar energy, not who produces the highest percentage of their country's solar capacity.) (And it shows which countries have the most installed solar capacity, not how much solar is actually produced.) The surprising part of the list is the inclusion of countries with relatively small territories. Germany, Japan, Italy -- they're all ahead of the U.S., even though we have more land.