Record year for wind and solar electricity in Great Britain in 2025

Renewable energy – seen as crucial to limiting climate change – will produce a record amount of electricity in Britain in 2025, according to a BBC analysis.

Wind power was the largest source of renewable electricity, according to provisional figures from the National Energy System Operator (Neso).

But electricity generated by solar power has increased by almost a third compared to 2024 levels, thanks to the UK’s sunniest year on record and the expansion of solar panels across the country.

Although behind renewables, electricity generated from fossil gas also increased slightly, highlighting the challenge of meeting the government’s ‘clean energy’ target by 2030.

“It’s been a pretty strong year in terms of renewable energy deployment,” said Pranav Menon, a senior research associate at think tank Aurora Energy Research.

“[But] what we don’t see is the exponential increase that you would need to get to clean energy by 2030, because those goals are very, very ambitious,” he added.

As part of its ‘clean energy’ target, the government aims to use virtually no polluting gases to generate electricity by 2030. It is also under pressure to deliver on its pledge to cut energy bills by up to £300 by then and has argued that clean energy can achieve this.

The Neso data – and the clean energy target – only covers Great Britain and not Northern Ireland, which has its own electricity transmission network operator.

The recent growth of renewable energy represents one of the most important areas of progress in global attempts to combat climate change.

This trend has also been notable in Britain over the past decade. The government wants to expand renewable energy even faster to help it meet its own clean energy target and reduce its carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

In 2025, wind, solar, hydraulic and biomass generated more than 127 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in Britain, according to BBC analysis of provisional Neso data.

This beats the previous high of 119 TWh reached in 2024.

Wind generated more than 85 TWh, or almost 30%, of Britain’s electricity last year, a slight increase compared to 2024, according to analysis of Neso data.

But the most notable change concerns solar energy.

Over the year, solar panels generated more than 18 TWh, or more than 6% of Britain’s electricity.

Even if this share remains relatively low, it represents growth of more than 4 TWh compared to 2024.

At its peak, solar power produced more than 40% of electricity during a small number of half-hour periods in July.

In 2013, no such period exceeded approximately 5% of electricity generation from solar energy.

This is partly due to the expansion of solar panels across the UK. Other large solar farms have come online this year, including the largest at Cleve Hill, near Faversham, Kent.

And it was a record year for rooftop solar, with around 250,000 new small-scale installations reported to the microgeneration certification scheme.

With 2025 being the UK’s sunniest year on record, conditions were ideal for Britain’s solar panels to take advantage of the long sunny days of spring and summer.

“Solar power is probably a larger part of the system than we expected, given that the cost has come down significantly,” said Michael Grubb, professor of energy and climate change at University College London.

Renewable energy can produce significant amounts of electricity when conditions are right. According to analysis of the BBC’s Neso data, around a third of the days in 2025, at least half of Britain’s electricity came from renewables.

But the British electricity network is still often largely dependent on fossil gas.

Analysis of Neso figures shows that gas generated more than 77 TWh – around 27% – of electricity, compared to 72 TWh in 2024.

This increase could be due to several factors, including falling UK electricity imports from Europe, falling nuclear generation, the closure of the last coal-fired power station in 2024 and rising electricity demand.

Driven by the rise in gas, British electricity was slightly more polluting in 2025 than in 2024, according to Neso data.

In 2025, each kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced 126 g of carbon dioxide contributing to global warming – up from 124 g/kWh in 2024 but down from 505 g/kWh in 2012.

With the exception of wind and solar, Neso’s figures only cover generation connected to the main transmission network.

They do not include small gas, biomass and hydropower operators supplying electricity locally, but these contribute only a relatively small fraction of total UK generation.

A separate analysis of UK government data by climate website Carbon Brief – which includes these smaller sources and Northern Ireland – shows very similar trends to the Neso data for Britain. This includes a new record for renewable energy and a slight increase in gas production.

The government has set its “clean energy” target as having 95% of all electricity generated in Britain come from renewables and nuclear power by 2030.

By 2024, clean sources produced almost three-quarters of the year’s total electricity generation, according to government figures.

These figures differ from Neso data, which includes imports as well as some gas production not covered by the government’s definition of clean energy.

The government’s figures for 2025 won’t be published until later this year, but the amount of gas still in the electricity mix shows there is much work to be done.

“There are still a significant number of periods in the year when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow and demand is high. […] and that’s where the system is sort of forced to rely on gas-fired electricity to meet demand,” Mr Menon said.

He added that there were solutions to this challenge. They include technologies such as batteries – to store renewable electricity for use when there is less sun and wind – as well as other low-carbon sources like nuclear, which can provide reliable generation.

One of the other challenges to meeting the clean energy goal is the need to upgrade the electricity grid, in part to connect new renewables and transport their electricity across the country.

Sometimes the grid cannot handle all the renewable electricity that could be produced, leading wind farms to be paid to reduce their production.

Network upgrades should help reduce the problem, but they increase costs in the short term.

This could offset some of the savings from some of the cheaper renewables that are starting to replace gas power, according to Professor Grubb.

But he added that he still expected bills to start falling in the coming years – partly thanks to renewable energy, but also assuming gas prices fall from their recent high levels.

Responding to the renewable energy data, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said: “After years of delay and underinvestment, this government is delivering on its promise to take back control of Britain’s energy with clean, locally produced energy. »

This would “protect households against the volatility of fossil fuel markets,” he added.

But shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho called on the government to abandon its clean energy target, arguing it was increasing energy bills.

“Britain is producing more renewable energy than ever before, but people should be aware of the extra costs that come with this,” she said.