Renewable energy – considered crucial to limiting climate change – produced a record amount of electricity in Great Britain in 2025, BBC analysis shows.
Wind was the biggest single renewable source of electricity, according to the provisional figures from the National Energy System Operator (Neso).
But solar-powered electricity rose by nearly a third on 2024 levels, helped by the UK’s sunniest year on record and the expansion of solar panels around the country.
While behind renewables, electricity from fossil gas also rose slightly, highlighting the challenge of reaching the government’s “clean power” target by 2030.
“It has been quite a strong year in terms of deployment of renewables,” said Pranav Menon, research senior associate at the Aurora Energy Research think tank.
“[But] what we’re not seeing is kind of the exponential scale-up that you’d need to get to clean power 2030, because those targets are very, very ambitious,” he added.
Under its “clean power” target, the government aims to use hardly any polluting gas to produce electricity by 2030. It is also under pressure to meet its pledge to bring energy bills down by up to £300 by then and has argued that clean power can achieve this.
Read more: BBC
