| Grid is good; you might run major loads such as your dishwasher and/or washing machine now to minimise CO2 emissions |
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You might have saved as much as 57% carbon emissions by choosing the best time to run your washing and other major loads.
Latest data is from Fri Mar 13 01:55:00 UTC 2026. This page should be updated every few minutes: use your browser's refresh/reload button if you need to check again.
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This page shows the current "carbon intensity" of the GB National Grid (ie the England/Scotland/Wales portions of the UK electricity grid) as a simple traffic-light indicator. Carbon intensity is a measure of how much greenhouse gas (especially CO2 or carbon dioxide) is emitted to generate a fixed amount of electricity.
Anything other than a GREEN light suggests that you should consider deferring heavy loads (eg starting a dishwasher or washing-machine at home) because the carbon intensity is relatively high, or because of other factors. Avoiding running major appliances such as washing/heating/cooking during RED times will save CO2 emissions.
You should still conserve first: don't run things that don't need to be run at all, don't leave things on that can be turned off at the wall, run full loads in your washing machine and dishwasher, etc, etc, before worrying about carbon intensity.
Planning ahead: note that in the UK/GB peak demand for electricity will usually be 4pm to 10pm especially on week days in winter (and a lesser peak around 8am to 11am), and peak carbon intensity is often around peak demand, so try to avoid big loads then; if possible run loads such as your dishwasher and washing machine overnight, eg on a delay timer or just as you go to bed, or when you have local microgeneration that can cover much/all of the load.
There are various arguments about whether this marginal cost calculation reflects reality, ie in practice is there simply a gas turbine somewhere that gets spun up a little if you demand extra power. There is much less argument about the value of lowering demand generally, and about lowering peak demand on various parts of the infrastructure.
Shifting loads to the night when energy is going into grid-scale storage such as pumped hydro, avoids pulling it out when you would otherwise run/dispatch the load, and thus saves round-trip losses of ~25% for that load.
You don't need to understand the numbers below, but some people like to see them!
Effective grid carbon intensity for a domestic user is currently 50gCO2/kWh including transmission and distribution losses of 7%.
Latest available grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) is approximately 47gCO2/kWh at Fri Mar 13 01:55:00 UTC 2026 over 27367MW of generation, with a rolling average over 24h of 73gCO2/kWh.
Minimum grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 45gCO2/kWh at Thu Mar 12 23:55:00 UTC 2026.
Maximum grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 103gCO2/kWh at Thu Mar 12 18:00:00 UTC 2026.
Average/mean grid generation carbon intensity (ignoring transmission/distribution losses) was approximately 73gCO2/kWh over the sample data set, with an effective end-user intensity including transmission and distribution losses of 78gCO2/kWh.
| Recent mean GMT hourly generation intensity gCO2/kWh (average=73); *now (=47) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 00 | 01 | 02* |
| Mean GMT hourly generation GW (all, zero-carbon) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Current/latest fuel mix at Fri Mar 13 01:55:00 UTC 2026: BIOMASS@1676MW CCGT@2183MW COAL@0MW INTELEC@628MW INTEW@0MW INTFR@613MW INTGRNL@0MW INTIFA2@672MW INTIRL@0MW INTNED@91MW INTNEM@0MW INTNSL@0MW INTVKL@325MW NPSHYD@454MW NUCLEAR@3444MW OCGT@3MW OIL@0MW OTHER@486MW PS@0MW WIND@16792MW.
Generation by fuel category (may overlap):
Overall generation intensity (kgCO2/kWh) computed using the following fuel year-2026 intensities (other fuels/sources are ignored): BIOMASS=0.12 CCGT=0.394 COAL=0.937 INTELEC=0.018 INTEW=0.322 INTFR=0.018 INTGRNL=0.322 INTIFA2=0.018 INTIRL=0.322 INTNED=0.199 INTNEM=0.105 INTNSL=0.009 INTVKL=0.075 NPSHYD=0.0 NUCLEAR=0.0 OCGT=0.651 OIL=0.935 OTHER=0.3 WIND=0.0.
Rolling correlation of fuel use against grid intensity (-ve implies that this fuel reduces grid intensity for non-callable sources): BIOMASS=-0.4565 CCGT=0.9655 INTELEC=0.3519 INTEW=-0.2552 INTFR=0.4522 INTGRNL=-0.1504 INTIFA2=0.2148 INTIRL=-0.1541 INTNED=0.5947 INTNEM=0.5506 INTNSL=0.6943 INTVKL=0.5126 NPSHYD=0.6325 NUCLEAR=-0.1446 OCGT=0.2370 OTHER=0.5622 WIND=-0.7292.
Key to fuel codes:
(Histogram input windows: 24h, 168h.)
This estimates the carbon intensity of generation connected to the National Grid GB (Great Britain) high-voltage transmission system, ignoring (pumped) storage and exports but including imports via interconnectors. This excludes 'embedded' generation, eg connected directly to the distribution system, such as small diesels, domestic microgeneration and a significant chunk of wind power, all of which also benefits from reduced transmission/distribution losses, so actual intensity may be somewhat different to (and probably lower than) that reported. However the emissions cost of each marginal/conserved kWh is probably accurately reflected.
(Colours are wrt the last 24h of data.)
This page updated at Fri Mar 13 02:01:07 UTC 2026; generation time 5137ms.
See also:
Poll every 10 minutes for 404 HTTP status code (404 means green, 200 means not green, anything else is 'unknown' status due to server/network/other problems) for automated systems:
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This free service may be unavailable or withdrawn at any time and is provided "as-is" with no warranties of any kind.
Some data used to generate this page is licensed from ELEXON.
Copyright © Damon Hart-Davis 2010–2026. [home]