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Where Britain's electricity is coming from right now

⚡ Where Britain's electricity is coming from live loading…

Two pictures: the grid right now, updated every half hour, and below it the whole energy system — heating, transport and industry — which moves once a year and tells a very different story.
Reading the grid…
All energy, not just electricity snapshot
Electricity above is the live part. This is the whole energy system — heating, transport and industry included — from DUKES 2026, published 30 July 2026 for calendar year 2025.
Fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal)75.1%
Low carbon (nuclear, bioenergy, renewables)22.0%
Low carbon is a record high; fossil fuels still supply three quarters of the energy the country uses. The gap between this and the live electricity figures above is heating and transport.
How much we produce ourselves
The UK imported 43.3% of its energy in 2025 — marginally less than the 43.7% of 2024, so import reliance is broadly flat rather than falling. Home production was 94.5 million tonnes of oil equivalent: oil output rose 2.6%, gas fell 3.4% to a record low, nuclear fell 11% to a record low, and wind, solar and hydro rose 7.3% to a record high.
Where the imports come from
DUKES 2026 names Norway as the UK's primary energy supplier and the largest source of gas imports, and the United States as the largest source of oil imports in 2025. Country-by-country shares sit in the DUKES annexes and are not yet on this tile — we would rather name no number than an approximate one.
i Reading the grid…

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⚡ Electricity is not the same as energy

What this tile is, and is not
These percentages are Great Britain's electricity generation in the current half-hour. Electricity is roughly a fifth of the energy the country actually uses — the rest is largely gas for heating and oil for transport. So a day when wind supplies half the grid is not a day when the country runs half on wind, and this tile would be misleading if it let you think otherwise.
Why "imported" has its own line
Interconnector cables link Britain to France, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland. Power flowing in through them was not generated here, so folding it into a total would overstate what Britain produces. It moves with the weather and with prices abroad, and it can flow the other way when we have a surplus.
Coal at zero
Not a rounding artefact: Britain's last coal-fired power station closed in September 2024, ending 142 years of coal-fired electricity. A zero here is now the normal reading.
Why the two halves of this tile disagree
The live figures at the top are electricity, where low-carbon sources routinely supply more than half. The annual figures below are all energy, where fossil fuels still supply about three quarters. Both are true: Britain has decarbonised its electricity much faster than its heating and its transport, and the distance between the two numbers is the size of the job left.
Where the annual figures come from
DUKES — the Digest of UK Energy Statistics — published by DESNZ each July for the previous calendar year. The 2026 edition, covering 2025, was published on 30 July 2026. It is an annual publication, so these numbers will not move again until next summer, and the tile is dated accordingly.
The carbon intensity figure
Grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour for the current period, with NESO's own banding from very low to very high. It falls when wind and solar are strong and rises when gas is filling the gap, which is why it can change markedly within a day. Where the actual figure has not been settled yet, NESO's forecast is shown and the tile says so.

Live data: National Energy System Operator (NESO) carbon intensity API, Great Britain only — Northern Ireland is a separate grid, half-hourly, no adjustments by us. Annual data: DESNZ, Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) 2026, covering 2025, Open Government Licence.

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