The line graph compares the 4 sources for generating electricity in France in a span of 32 years from 1980 to 2012.
Overall, the use of nuclear energy to produce electricity showed significant increase throughout the years. Thermal and hydroelectric showed fluctuations towards a decreasing trend.
The sources for power generation that gained more attention by the year 2012 are nuclear and renewable energy. Where nuclear energy had already shown dramatic growth of producing more than 200 terawatt hours in 1985, renewable energy had no competition with it. It was not until 2010 when renewable energy started gaining popularity and accounted for production of more than 25 terrawatt hours of electricity, the time when use of nuclear contributed to reached up to 400-450 TW-h of power generation.
Thermal and hydroelectric power generation methods generally declined in 2012 when compared with 1980. Both these sources had slight fluctuations in the years in between, such as that of 1995 when thermal produced less than 50 terawatt hours as compared to hydroelectric power which produced almost 60 terawatt hours of electricity. However, in 2005, both these techniques produced almost equal amounts of power and this trend was maintained until 2012.