What is United Kingdom's pathway to limit global warming to 1.5°C?

Power

Decarbonising the power sector

Clean power is an essential milestone on the road to real zero. The UK has set a target to achieve clean power, defined as 95% clean generation, by 2030.1 This target includes generation from nuclear, renewables and fossil fuels equipped with carbon capture and storage. The UK has made rapid progress towards this goal – in 2025, clean power provided 65% of generation, up from 23% in 2010.2 While fossil gas is still the largest source of electricity in the UK, it’s share in generation has declined to 31% in 2025, down from 46% in 2010. Meanwhile wind and solar generation are growing rapidly, particularly offshore wind, which provided 17% of generation in 2024.

United Kingdom's power mix

terawatt-hour per year

Scaling

Electricity generation has been declining over the past two decades. This is because electrification rates have been broadly stagnant at ~20% of final energy in the UK since 2005. As a result, efficiency gains have enabled reduced electricity demand. In the HPA scenario, this trend reverses due to the rapid electrification of end-use sectors, and electricity generation grows almost four times by 2050 to reach 1060 TWh. This is slightly higher than in the Climate Change Committee’s pathway to net zero, in which electricity generation triples to reach 866 TWh. This higher electricity demand is required to drive a fossil phase-out (i.e. to achieve real zero) via deeper electrification and a more rapid scale-up of synthetic fuels.

Renewables, and particularly wind, are the backbone of this transition. The share of fossil gas in the system falls to around 5% by 2030 in the HPA scenario, aligning with the UK Government’s clean power target, before falling to very low levels (~1% or below) from 2035 onwards.

The HPA scenario sees some continued use of biomass in the power sector, which provides around 12% of electricity generation in 2030. In the HPA, all biomass generation transitions towards biomass with CCS, so that by 2050 all unabated biomass plants have been retrofitted with CCS. However, the scenario does still see non-negligible biomass generation throughout the transition. Given that current biomass generation in the UK is often associated with poor-quality and emissions-intensive supply chains, and biomass with CCS deployment is progressing slowly, limiting reliance on biomass by further accelerating wind and solar deployment is likely to be more effective for reducing emissions.3

United Kingdom's power sector emissions and carbon intensity

MtCO₂/yr

Unit

Investments

As end-use sectors rapidly electrify and energy demand grows, investment in renewables capacity is frontloaded under the HPA scenario. Total renewable capacity grows by nearly 3x, reaching 170 GW. Although our latest data is from 2023, provisional data from 2025 indicates total installed renewable capacity has risen to 65 GW.4 Solar capacity reaches 70 GW by 2030, and wind capacity reaches 80 GW. This is slightly higher than the government’s solar generation capacity target of 50 GW in the Clean Power Plan, and at the very top of the government’s wind capacity target of up to 80 GW.5 The Clean Power Plan is nearly aligned with what is required to achieve clean power under the HPA and is driving rapid progress towards this goal. The slight differences between the Plan and the HPA are likely due to greater levels of electricity demand from end-use sectors assumed in these scenarios compared to the Clean Power Plan. In the Clean Power Plan, total UK generation in 2030 reaches 350 TWh, whereas in the HPA scenario, it reaches roughly 470 TWh.

United Kingdom's renewable electricity investments and capacities

Billion USD / yr

Scaling

Dimension

  • Graph description

    Average annual investments in power sector renewable electricity capacity and cumulative installed power capacities across time based on the HPA scenario.

    Methodology

The capacity required under the Clean Power Plan requires an average annual generation capacity investment of roughly GBP 30 bn between 2025-2030.6 This is roughly around the level required under the HPA scenario, which sees annual investment in renewables reach an average USD 41 bn (equivalent to about GBP 30 bn) annually between now and 2030 and USD 31 bn annually from 2031-2035.

Unlocking the deep integration of wind and solar foreseen in the HPA scenario will also require the UK to successfully manage transmission and distribution challenges as electricity generation grows while becoming more geographically distributed. Transmission system operators have announced a GBP 67 bn investment package to upgrade the grid to accommodate the renewables capacity increases in the Clean Power Plan.7 Although nearly aligned, This will likely not be enough to accommodate the higher capacity growth foreseen under the HPA scenario.

1.5°C compatible power sector benchmarks

Carbon intensity, renewable generation share, and fossil fuel generation share from 1.5°C pathway based on the HPA scenario for United Kingdom

Indicator
2023
2030
2035
2040
2050
2060
2070
Power sector decarbonised by
Carbon intensity of power
gCO₂/kWh
179
0
0
-6
-9
-6
-5
2030
Relative to reference year in %
-100%
-100%
-103%
-105%
-103%
-103%
Indicator
2023
2030
2035
2040
2050
2060
2070
Share of unabated coal
%
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
Share of unabated gas
%
36
6
1
1
0
0
0
Share of renewable energy
%
36
70
81
87
94
96
95

The HPA scenario rapidly scales CDR from the 2030s onwards, with engineered removals reaching around 5 GtCO2/yr by 2050, supported by limited removals of around 2 GtCO2/yr from the land-use system. The HPA scenario avoids large-scale nature-based CDR, given the risks of overreliance on natural sinks in a warming world. 
All values are rounded

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