Where Our Energy Comes From

UK Energy Supply: Where Britain's Gas and Electricity Come From and What It Means for Homes

Britain runs on a mix of homegrown and imported energy, and the balance matters directly to households because imported fuel carries prices set by world markets. The UK is, in the government's own words, "a net energy importer with a high dependence on gas and oil"¹. By 2025, Scotland's energy strategy noted, the UK was expected to be importing 67% of its gas from outside the UK². On the electricity side the picture is different and changing fast: renewables supplied 51% of UK electricity generation in 2024³, coal has been phased out entirely⁴, and nuclear provided 41 TWh in 2024 before falling to 36 TWh in 2025⁴.

For a household, this mix shapes two things: what the energy that reaches your meter actually is, and how exposed your bills are to events far outside Britain. Most heating in the UK is supplied by gas⁵, and about 24.5 million homes are connected to the mains gas grid⁶, so the gas import story reaches almost every living room. The electricity story is increasingly a British one, with wind, nuclear and solar generated on UK soil and delivered over UK networks.

Where the UK's energy actually comes from

Energy reaches UK homes through two separate systems that are often confused. Gas arrives mostly as a physical fuel, pumped from fields and terminals through gas pipelines and interconnectors into the national network. Electricity is generated here, from gas burned in power stations, wind, nuclear, solar and other sources, and moved over the electricity transmission network and regional electricity distribution networks to your meter.

The official statistics on energy consumption in the UK cover the industry, transport, domestic and services sectors, and they show a country that draws on both domestic production and imports across all of them⁹. The domestic sector, meaning homes, is dominated by heating, and heating in the UK is dominated by gas: 85% of homes, about 24.5 million of them, are supplied directly by the mains gas grid, along with over two million businesses⁶.

That structure is the starting point for understanding UK energy security. A home heated by gas is connected to an international fuel market, whatever tariff it is on. A home using electricity is connected to a generation fleet that is increasingly British, but which still includes gas-fired power stations that burn the same imported fuel. The pages in this lane follow each thread: where Britain's gas comes from, the UK electricity generation mix, and how the whole system is kept in balance.

Imports: the majority of UK energy now comes from abroad

The UK stopped being self-sufficient in energy some years ago. The government's own assessment is blunt: the UK is "a net energy importer with a high dependence on gas and oil"¹. On gas specifically, the Scottish Government's energy strategy recorded that by 2025 the UK was expected to be importing 67% of its gas from outside the UK².

The gas that arrives comes from several directions. UK gas comes from the North Sea, Norway, the Middle East and North Africa¹⁰. Norwegian gas travels by pipeline; gas from further afield arrives as liquefied natural gas, shipped in tankers and regasified at UK terminals. The routes and the volumes matter to households because pipeline gas and shipped gas are bought on different terms, and both are exposed to global prices, which is why global events move UK energy prices.

Electricity is also traded across borders. Total annual imports through electricity interconnectors rose by 31% to 43.7 TWh in 2024¹¹. Interconnector imports are not a dependence in the same sense as gas, because power flows both ways depending on prices and availability, but they do tie British electricity prices to continental ones at the margin.

How much storage the UK holds to buffer these imports is a separate question, covered in UK gas storage, where Britain holds less than some of its neighbours.

The electricity mix: gas, wind, nuclear and solar in one grid

The electricity reaching a British socket at any moment is a blend, and the blend changes by the hour. Over a year, the pattern is fairly stable. Official guidance on 2024 generation put 51% from renewable sources such as solar power and wind power, and 14% from nuclear energy³. Independent guidance from the Energy Systems Catapult describes the same system with renewable energy such as wind, solar and landfill gas contributing around 35%, and nuclear power contributing around 20% of generation⁶. The figures differ because they count different things over different periods, and both are honest readings of a mix in transition.

The remainder comes from fossil fuels. Independent guidance puts 35% of UK supply as still generated by burning fossil fuels including natural gas, oil and LPG¹⁰. Gas-fired power stations are the largest of these, and they set the price of electricity at peak times in most hours, which is why gas costs flow into electricity bills even for households that never burn gas.

What no longer contributes is coal. The Climate Change Committee's 2026 progress report records the phase out of coal from UK electricity generation, with emissions from coal now zero in 2025, alongside the ongoing expansion of the second largest national offshore wind capacity in the world⁴. The story of that transition is told in the end of coal power in Britain.

Keeping a mix this varied flowing at a steady 50 hertz is a continuous engineering task, handled through balancing services and frequency response and increasingly by grid-scale battery storage.

Clean sources generate roughly 50% of Britain's power

The renewable share is the number that has moved fastest, and it is the one most often quoted differently. The range across current sources runs like this:

The differences are real but not contradictory. Generation counts what power stations and wind farms produced; supply and grid shares can be measured over different periods or include different plant. What every source agrees on is the direction: renewables are now at or around half of British electricity, with wind the single biggest contributor¹².

For households, the renewable share matters in two ways. First, it steadily decouples electricity prices from gas prices, though not yet fully. Second, it creates new patterns: when wind output is high, wholesale prices can fall, and occasionally go negative, a phenomenon explained in negative electricity prices in Great Britain. Homes on time-of-use tariffs, or taking part in household demand flexibility, can benefit directly from those hours.

The detail behind the headline, technology by technology, is in wind power on the UK grid and hydropower and pumped storage in the UK.

Offshore wind: from today's fleet towards 100GW

Offshore wind is the technology the UK government has placed at the centre of its plans, and the targets are large. The British Energy Security Strategy set a new ambition of up to 50GW of offshore wind by 2030¹³. The Climate Change Committee's earlier advice on raising UK climate ambition described a path growing from the Prime Minister's promised 40GW in 2030 to 100GW or more by 2050¹⁴. Its Balanced Pathway for the Seventh Carbon Budget sees offshore wind grow six-fold from 15 GW of capacity in 2023 to 88 GW by 2040, with onshore wind capacity doubling to 32 GW by 2040¹⁵.

Money is following the targets. The 2025 Spending Review included £300 million of Great British Energy support over the spending period for offshore wind supply chains¹⁶, intended to build the manufacturing base in Britain rather than importing the turbines and blades.

Output depends on the weather, and the capacity factor, the share of maximum output actually achieved, varies by nation. In Wales, the capacity factor for offshore wind is evaluated to be 33%¹⁷, meaning a Welsh offshore turbine produces about a third of its theoretical maximum over a year. That variability is why the system needs storage, interconnectors and firm capacity, themes picked up in long-duration electricity storage and the capacity market.

The dependence that remains is on manufacturing and supply chains. Turbines, cables and installation vessels are built by international companies, and a household's electricity does not become fully British just because the wind that drives it is.

Nuclear: 41TWh in 2024, and a share that has settled near 14%

Nuclear is the steady, weather-proof part of the British mix, but steady does not mean unchanged. Nuclear generation fell from 41 TWh in 2024 to 36 TWh in 2025, a 12% reduction due to operational challenges at several reactors, particularly at Hartlepool⁴. In 2024, official guidance put nuclear at 14% of UK electricity generation³; in 2023 it was 14.2%¹⁸. The most recent official statistics, for the three months to May 2026, show nuclear at 16.6% of electricity generation by Major Power Producers, up 0.2% on the same period a year earlier¹⁹.

The longer history shows how far the fleet has contracted. In 2004, Parliament was told the nuclear industry was "the electricity generator that produces a quarter of our electricity", and that without life extensions or new build its contribution would fall sharply over the following 20 years²⁰. Some stations were extended, and the share settled well below the quarter it once provided.

Official counts put nuclear's current contribution at 16.6% of electricity generation by Major Power Producers⁶, a reading that reflects a particular counting basis and period. In the three months from March 2026 to May 2026, compared with the same period a year earlier, nuclear generation by Major Power Producers was up 0.2%⁶.

For households, nuclear's value is that it runs regardless of weather and regardless of gas prices. Its limits are that the existing stations are ageing, with outages like those at Hartlepool showing in the annual numbers⁴, and that new stations take many years to build.

Green gas from waste is already reaching British households

While electricity decarbonises, the gas grid has its own renewable: biomethane, a gas produced from organic material and cleaned to pipeline standard before injection. The Climate Change Committee described the feedstocks in 2015: they "largely come from agriculture, followed by food waste, while a smaller but growing share comes from sewage sludge"²¹.

Biomethane matters because it reaches homes without any change at the house end. It flows through the same pipes and burns in the same boilers and cookers as natural gas, which is why it is sometimes called green gas. A household cannot select a biomethane-only supply, because the gas is blended into the national mix, but every connected home receives some share of it. The detail is in biomethane and green gas in the UK grid.

The scale of the prize is set by the emissions it displaces. Ofgem's case study on the future of heated homes notes 30% of current emissions coming from natural gas²², so every unit of biomethane that replaces fossil gas in the grid cuts emissions from connected homes without those homes doing anything at all.

The limits are equally plain. Biomethane is a finite resource, bounded by how much agricultural material, food waste and sewage the country produces, and it cannot replace the whole gas supply. It is a partial answer for the gas grid, not a complete one, which is why attention has also turned to hydrogen in the gas grid as a possible longer-term route.

Off-grid living: why bottled gas is the nearest substitute for piped gas

Not every home is on the gas grid. Four million UK households, 15%, are off the mains gas grid²³, and a separate official estimate put the figure at 4.8 million households across Great Britain in 2024, or 16.0% of domestic properties⁷. The trade body for the fuel puts it differently again: 84% of domestic properties are connected to the gas grid, and some two million properties are off-grid and depend on alternative fuel sources for heating and cooking²⁴. The counts differ in scope and date, but the picture is consistent: roughly one home in six heats with something other than mains gas.

Those homes use a range of other fuels to heat their homes including heating oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), solid fuels, mains electricity, and microgeneration²³. The supply side of the two main fuels is covered in heating oil and LPG supply in the UK.

LPG is the closest substitute for mains gas in behaviour. It fuels all familiar domestic household gas appliances, such as central heating boilers, gas fires, gas ranges, AGAs and cookers²⁴. Its environmental position is documented: LPG emits 12% less carbon dioxide than oil, 35% less than coal, and produces 90% less carbon monoxide and 50% less smog than mains natural gas²⁴. Installation cost is reported to be significantly cheaper compared with electric, oil and air source heat pumps²⁴, though running prices are supplier-quoted and not published.

Practically, LPG works like a private gas supply. Tanks can be buried below ground to improve the aesthetics of a building, and telemetry systems can alert the supplier when fuel is low, making deliveries manageable and efficient²⁴. The independence is real: no gas network, no network charges. The dependence simply moves to the delivery company and the contract price, which is why off-grid homes were given specific support, including the £200 Alternative Fuel Payment made to households across Great Britain not using mains gas for heating²⁵.

What the average household actually uses

The average UK home uses around 2,500 kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to roughly 6.8 kWh per day⁸. That figure is a maker's published guidance, and other guidance puts daily household use higher, between 8 and 12 kWh, because consumption varies widely with home size, occupancy and how the home is heated. The two readings differ, and both should be treated as indicative rather than exact.

The official underpinning for domestic consumption figures comes from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which publishes the domestic electricity consumption indicator for Great Britain²⁶. It is the source to trust for the national picture, while any individual home's use is best read from its own meter.

Why the numbers matter: a home using 2,500 kWh a year can cover a meaningful share of that from its own solar panels, and can shift a further share into cheap or even negative-price hours using flexible tariffs. The smaller the demand, the cheaper the route to independence, which is why consumption figures sit alongside generation figures in any serious assessment of a home's options.

How this affects your household's energy self-sufficiency

The national supply picture defines the limits of what a single home can control. The British Energy Security Strategy sets out how Great Britain will accelerate homegrown power for greater energy independence, describing this as central to weaning Britain off expensive fossil fuels, which are subject to volatile gas prices set by international markets¹³. The government's assessment of its Heat and Buildings Strategy makes the household connection explicit: delivering on its goals will help to protect UK consumers from future price spikes and increase energy security by reducing energy needs and shifting demand from gas to electricity, which in future will be predominantly supplied from UK-based renewable generation²⁷.

Read that carefully and it sets out a household's real choices. Reducing energy needs, through insulation and efficiency, cuts exposure to every fuel. Shifting from gas to electricity moves a home from an imported fuel to an increasingly homegrown one. Generating and storing energy at home, and flexing demand to when the grid is cleanest and cheapest, goes further still.

What remains outside a home's control is equally clear. A gas-heated home depends on imports and on the gas network, whatever the national strategy says. An all-electric home depends on the electricity system, on NESO as system operator, and on the networks and charges described in transmission and balancing charges. The full picture of what a home can and cannot control is set out in energy security and household independence.

The path to net zero and the shifting energy mix

The UK's legal target is net zero emissions by 2050²⁸, with an ambition for a fully decarbonised power sector by 2035³⁰. The supply mix a household draws on will therefore keep changing through the 2030s and 2040s, and the direction is set out in official planning. A Strategic Spatial Energy Plan will set out a long-term view of what energy sources are needed to reach net zero, and their most optimal locations across Great Britain on a zonal basis from 2030 to 2050³¹.

The milestones already visible in the numbers include coal emissions reaching zero in 2025⁴, offshore wind growing towards the capacities described earlier, and nuclear's share holding in the mid-teens while new stations are built. On the heat side, the shift from gas boilers to heat pumps and other electric heating is tracked in schemes like the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, whose official statistics show installations continuing across England and Wales, with a median biomass boiler capacity of 22.8 kW recorded in 2026 Q2³².

The cost question has been answered at the national level. The Climate Change Committee reported in March 2026 that in all scenarios, achieving Net Zero was found to be a more cost-effective path for the UK economy than continued reliance on fossil fuels, bringing a net benefit to society³³. Its comparison was stark: the cost of net zero by 2050 is less than a single fossil fuel price shock.

For homes, the practical meaning is that the electricity arriving at the meter gets cleaner each year without any action by the household, while the gas in the pipes changes more slowly, through biomethane blending and possible hydrogen trials. A home that moves its heating and transport onto electricity moves with the system; a home that stays on gas waits for the gas system to change around it.

Grids, storage, markets and the four nations explained

A supply mix is only half the story. Between a wind farm or a gas terminal and a household meter sit the networks, markets and operators that actually deliver energy, and each is covered by a page in this lane.

The electricity side runs from the electricity transmission network through regional electricity distribution networks, with NESO balancing the whole system and publishing its winter and summer outlooks on whether supply will meet demand. When margins tighten, the mechanics are explained in electricity margins and shortfall notices, and the physics of keeping a low-carbon grid stable in grid inertia and system stability. Storage runs from grid-scale batteries to long-duration storage under the LDES cap and floor, and firm capacity is paid for through the capacity market.

The gas side runs from National Gas Transmission, the system operator and owner of the high-pressure backbone, through the regional gas distribution networks: Cadent, SGN, Northern Gas Networks and Wales & West Utilities. If the worst happens, the sequence of warnings and household priority during a gas supply emergency is set out in the regulations.

Prices are formed in the wholesale gas and electricity markets, and low-carbon generation is funded through Contracts for Difference and the closed Renewables Obligation, both of which appear on bills.

The four nations differ. Scotland generates far more than it consumes and has its own policy framework, covered in energy supply in Scotland; Wales publishes its own generation statistics¹⁷, covered in energy supply in Wales; and Northern Ireland runs a separate single electricity market with Ireland, described in energy supply in Northern Ireland. To find who runs the wires and pipes where you live, use how to find your gas and electricity network by postcode.