UK electricity defies North Sea decline to be ‘most British’ in over 20 years – analysis
Renewables that require no fuels have generated more power than fossil fuels for the second year in a row, pushing electricity fuel imports to lowest share in over 20 years.
By Dr Simon Cran-McGreehin
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New analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has found that the UK’s electricity supply has become ever more British in the last year, with a higher proportion of the energy used to supply power coming from UK-based sources and a growing independence from foreign fuels such as gas imports for gas power stations.
Calculations based on new Government data [1] estimate that, in 2025, 46% of the primary energy used to supply electricity to the UK was imported, down from 48% in 2024, and down from the peak of 67% in 2013 – and the lowest share since 2004, over 20 years ago. [2]
The reduction in imported primary energy in 2025 was enough to supply electricity for the equivalent of over 2 million homes. [3]
Set against the backdrop of the second gas price crisis caused by a war in just a matter of years, the results could improve again in 2026, if deployment of renewables exceeds the decline in North Sea gas production.
Without renewables powered by UK wind, water and sunshine, the UK would have been more reliant on imported gas, such that 73% (almost three quarters) of the primary energy used for supplying UK electricity would have been imported in 2025. [4]
Dr Simon Cran-McGreehin, Head of Analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said: “The expansion of renewables is more than making up for the ongoing decline in North Sea gas output which has happened even under decades of policy to maximise extraction.
“Many people won’t necessarily realise it, but the UK has made significant progress in shifting away from gas and towards renewables, boosting energy independence in the process. The UK was particularly badly hurt by the last gas crisis because, because as a country we’ve been so dependent on gas for both generating electricity and heating homes. As the current crisis shows, we’re not out of the woods yet, and the grid requires investment, but renewables already are helping to insulate against and gradually unplug from the volatile global oil and gas system.
“The point that many politicians neglect to mention when talking about it is that reaching net zero emissions is not only scientifically the only way to stop climate change, but it also means gradually detaching ourselves from burning oil and gas and the instability for billpayers and businesses that those markets have created.
“Combined with electric heat pumps replacing gas boilers and EVs taking the place of petrol and diesel cars, you can see a path to UK energy powering the economy and people’s homes better protected from these global shocks. British wind and sunlight don’t run through the Strait of Hormuz.
“It’s the hard work of communities in Grimsby, Tyneside and Sunderland building the offshore wind farms and electric cars that enable us to become more energy independent.”
Over 53% of the energy used for UK electricity supplies came from UK sources in 2025, up from 51% in 2024. [5] Higher output from renewables such as wind, hydro and solar that use no fuels – and therefore no imported fuel – accounted for the majority of this improvement, giving over six times as much extra benefit as was provided by shifts in fossil fuel sources. Gas net imports did fall slightly in 2025, but this was only possible due to a reduction in demand, whilst North Sea gas production fell again. [6]
Renewables that use no fuels generated 8% more power in 2025 than in 2024, with solar output rising the most, by almost 37% (over a third). Overall, these fuel-free renewables accounted for 36.6% of UK supplies in 2025, up from 34.1% in 2024, beating fossil fuel generation for the second year in a row. [7]
Research has found that more renewables connecting to the grid reduces the number of times that gas power stations set the price of electricity, and it is estimated that large wind farms cut the day-ahead wholesale price of electricity by a third last year. [8]
Analysis has shown that around 90% of the oil and gas that could be extracted from the North Sea has already been removed. [9]
On 25 March 2026, a new record was set for UK renewable generation, with wind generating 23.9GW of power, [10] and data suggests that solar added a further 10.3GW, taking the total for wind and solar to over 34GW. [11]
Notes to editors:
1. Updated Energy Trends (ET) datasets were published by DESNZ on 2 April 2026, with data up to the end of Q4 2025.
2. The analysis estimated the primary energy required for generating electricity in the UK, and how much of that primary energy was imported. It also included electricity net imports, treating each unit as one unit of imported primary energy. Each unit of fuel-free UK renewables was treated as one unit of UK-based primary energy, as is standard practice. The analysis used several Government datasets in combination: ET 2.1 and ET 2.4 for coal; ET 3.1 and ET 3.2 for oil and oil-based fuels; ET 4.1 for natural gas; DUKES 6.4, DUKES 6.6.C and UKWPT tables 10, 11a & 13a for bioenergy (solid biomass, liquid biofuels, and biogas); and ET 5.1, ET 5.2 and DUKES 5.10.B&C for electricity. For each fuel in each year was calculated: share of UK electricity supply mix; efficiency of power generation, and hence amount of fuel used; net import dependence (net imports as percentage of demand) and hence amount of net fuel imported for power generation and supply. Some data for bioenergy currently extends only to 2024, but the values have been comparatively stable in the past few years and so recent averages were applied to 2025. For nuclear power, publicly available data is limited, but it was deduced that reprocessing of spent fuel from UK reactors and the use of only reprocessed fuel at Sizewell B could potentially equate to up to 20% of the energy context of nuclear fuel used in the UK in recent years (and a lower proportion in previous decades when the fleet was larger).
3. The equivalent number of homes was calculated using the generation that could have been supplied by each type of avoided fuel imports, including net electricity imports, scaled down to final consumption, and divided by Typical Domestic Consumption Values (TDCV) of 2.7 MWh/yr.
4. The impact of having no fuel-free renewables was calculated by taking their annual generation and adding it to the gas generation (which would have been the most likely alternative in the absence of renewables), and repeating the process set out above to estimate the amount of imported primary energy.
5. Note that results for imported primary energy and UK-based primary energy do not sum to 100% in some years because, whilst electrical storage was included in the analysis, it was not treated as being either UK-based or imported energy, on the grounds that the source of the electricity used to fill the storage cannot be deduced using only annual data. In reality, electrical storage is increasingly filled using UK wind and solar, but this can only be demonstrated using highly granular data, and was hence beyond the scope of this analysis.
6. According to ET 4.1 (DENSZ, Apr-2026), from 2024 to 2025, UK gas production fell by 11.3 TWh (3.3%), gas demand fell by 5.9TWh (0.9%), and there were changes to transfers and stocks (storage), such that net imports fell by 4.3TWh (1.3%).
7. Output of different generation technologies as a proportion of UK generation and of UK supply (i.e. generation plus net imports) was calculated using data from ET 5.1(DESNZ, Apr-2026)
8. Wind farms cut power prices by almost a third in 2025 (ECIU, Jan-2026)
9. Around 90% of UK North Sea oil and gas ‘already drained dry’ (ECIU, Mar-2026)
10. Great Britain achieves a new maximum wind generation record (NESO, Mar-2026)
11. Data for 25-Mar-2026 for solar, wind, and embedded wind from NESO data portal(accessed 2-Apr-2026)