This year’s Christmas could be Britain’s greenest yet, energy operator says | Energy
Britain’s energy system operator has predicted that this year’s Christmas Day could be the greenest day ever.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) said it could record the lowest recorded carbon intensity (a measure of how much carbon dioxide is released to generate electricity) on the network for December 25 if the weather remains mild and windy for the rest of December.
Neso’s manager, Craig Dyke, said the power grid was working very quickly. record high 97.7% carbon neutral on April 1 earlier this year.
“This Christmas we are likely to see the lowest ever carbon intensity on the network on the big day,” he said.
The company responsible for keeping the lights on, bought by the government from National Grid last year, said the greenest Christmas Day yet was in 2023, when carbon intensity was recorded at 30 million grams of carbon dioxide. This was five times less than emissions in 2018.
More than 40% of electricity generation on Christmas Day last year came from renewable energy sources. In 2009 it was at 1.7%. Earlier this month, wind turbines produced enough electricity to “power approximately 3 billion strings of 100-bulb LED fairy lights” in a single spot.
Neso said an extra 2GW of wind and 3GW of solar would come onto the network in 2025, taking the UK’s total renewable energy capacity to a historic high of 53GW. The higher capacity, combined with below-average energy demand for that time of year, will mean lower emissions on 25 December.
While energy may be greener this Christmas, increased consumption at the end of the year could have a detrimental impact on the environment. UK households threw away an estimated 168 million light-up Christmas items and other “fast tech” gifts last year, according to research from Material Focus.
Meanwhile, a separate study found that 1.1 billion electrical products and 450 million batteries are irresponsibly thrown away every year.
A greener Christmas is coming this year as the government looks to transition from fossil fuels to net zero by 2050. Neso’s analysis earlier this year found that the UK currently spends around 10% of its gross domestic product on net zero-related investments, and predicts these costs will rise in the coming years and remain higher than today until the 2030s.
In its most ambitious scenario, it predicts costs could peak at around £460bn by 2029, then start to fall to around 5% of GDP by 2050, or around £220bn a year. In the “fallback” scenario, which is based on a future in which Britain misses its net-zero target and ignores the cost of climate damage, total costs are around £350bn lower.
