The United States has more than tripled its renewable energy production in the past decade but is only slightly ahead of Mexico in the percentage of electricity it gets from renewable sources.

Those figures comes from a report issued Monday by the National Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. The U.S. got about 2.7 percent of its electricity from renewables last year, an increase of 341 percent during the past decade.

However, the nation still lags far behind Europe and Indonesia in its use of wind, solar, geothermal, wave and tidal electricity.

The report ranked the United States No. 7 among the Group of 20 nations with the largest economies. Mexico ranks No. 8 with 2.6 percent.

Germany ranked No. 1 with 10.7 percent and Russia ranked last.

By contrast, much smaller countries such as Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain get more than 15 percent of their electricity from renewables.

Since 2004, the largest amount of total new investment occurred in the European Union, followed by the U.S. and China. The U.S. saw $215 billion in renewables investment between 2004 and the first quarter of 2012.

The U.S. saw $44.5 billion in renewable investment last year alone, the NRDC said.