The UK’s major electricity grid reached a new zero-carbon record this week, with carbon-free electricity sources supplying 98.8% of electricity between 3:30 PM and 4:00 PM on Wednesday, April 22.
This is reported by the National Energy System Operator (NESO), which published these figures on LinkedIn yesterday. Not surprisingly, the majority of the electricity mix comes from wind and nuclear power, which were responsible for 50.1% and 34.4% of the total supply respectively.
Although solar energy’s contribution to total electricity supply was low – accounting for just 2.2% of supply during this half-hour period – it delivered a record 14.8 GW of supply around midday, a record figure at the time. NESO notes that the solar system then delivered a new record figure of 15 GW on Thursday, April 23 between 12:30 PM and 1:00 PM.
The grid broke the record between 3:30 PM and 4:00 PM. Credit: NESO.
Encouragingly, gas only accounts for 1.2% of electricity supply, which is a record low for this technology. The changes in the contribution of gas and carbon-free technologies on April 22 are shown in the graph above, with the contribution of gas only exceeding that of carbon-free sources during the early morning hours and a few hours late in the evening.
“This industry-leading carbon neutral record underlines the resilience of the UK’s national electricity system, which once again demonstrates that it can safely run on large amounts of home-grown renewable energy sources,” said NESO, whose record figures for solar power generation in particular follow record-breaking figures published earlier this month.
On April 7, Britain reached 14.4 GW of solar energyjust a day after setting a generational record. Major UK solar projects have therefore reported record generation for two consecutive days in two separate periods in April 2026 alone.
