Could 2025 could be the greenest Christmas ever? NESO thinks so.

There’s a chance this Christmas Day could be the greenest on record if the weather remains relatively mild and windy over the festive season. That means zero-carbon sources like wind and solar could be providing a larger share of electricity.

In 2024 over 40 per cent of electricity generation on Christmas Day came from renewables (to put that in perspective, in 2019 it was 1.7 per cent). This year, an extra 2GW of wind and 3GW of solar came onto the network, taking Britain’s total renewables capacity to an historic high of 53GW to drive down carbon intensity.

In addition, there has been a large increase in battery capacity too, now totalling 8.9GW for the Grid. This year an extra 3.1GW of battery storage has been added to the network.

Pairing more generation and storage capacity from renewable sources with lower-than-average energy demand for the time of year, could lead to our greenest 25 December ever.

Also the shift to on-demand TV and improvements in energy efficient appliances means that there are now see much smaller spikes in electricity demand associated with popular TV shows.

As reported, Britain also smashed the wind generation record earlier this month, when turbines generated 23.8GW of electricity in just half an hour on 5 December, and earlier this year, Britain also broke the solar generation record, exceeding 14GW for the first time.

Craig Dyke, director of system operations at NESO, said: “A far cry from the smoggy Dickensian scenes of a ‘Christmas Carol’, seasonal festivities in Britain today are more likely to be powered by clean homegrown sources of renewable energy than ever before. 2025 saw us run our electricity grid at 97.7 percent zero carbon for the first time in history. And this Christmas there’s the possibility we’ll see the lowest ever carbon intensity on the network on the big day itself.”

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