US renewable electricity output

Between 2015 and 2021, global emails sent per day and US renewable electricity output both grew, correlating at 0.9651 across seven data points. The ecological reading is encouraging: every email sent is being offset by a wind turbine somewhere. The realistic reading is that seven data points of two things going up is not a correlation—it's a direction. Both numbers could not have gone down during this period without something going catastrophically wrong, which means the r-value is measuring the absence of catastrophe rather than the presence of a relationship.

Global emails sent per day grew from roughly 200 billion in 2015 to over 300 billion by 2021, driven by marketing automation, transactional notifications, and the persistence of email as a communication channel. US renewable electricity output grew from approximately 550 TWh to over 800 TWh, driven by wind and solar capacity additions, declining costs, and state-level renewable portfolio standards. Seven data points of two growing metrics over seven years is insufficient to establish any statistical relationship.

Seven data points of two things that only go up will always produce a high correlation. The r-value measures direction, not connection, and seven years is not enough time for direction to be meaningful.