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Analysis: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1bn in March 2026

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Original article by Simon Evans and Ho Woo Nam republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. 

Aerial view of a solar farm and wind turbines, in the East Midlands, UK. Credit: Paul White – UK Industries / Alamy Stock Photo

The UK avoided the need for gas imports worth £1bn in March 2026 thanks to record electricity generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis.

Wind generation hit a new record for the month of March on the island of Great Britain, up 38% year-on-year, while solar nearly matched the output of last year’s exceptionally sunny spring.

Together, wind and solar generated 11 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in March 2026, up a combined 28% and setting a new record for the month, as shown in the figure below.

Chart showing that record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1bn in March 2026
Monthly generation from wind and solar in terawatt hours on the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), which has a separate electricity system from the island of Ireland, which includes Northern Ireland. Source: National Energy System Operator (NESO) and Carbon Brief analysis.

This record wind and solar output avoided the need to import 21TWh of gas – roughly 18 fully loaded tankers of liquified natural gas (LNG) – which would have cost around £1bn at current high prices due to the Iran war.

(This is based on gas costing 130p per therm, or £44 per megawatt hour, compared with the range of 120-170p per therm seen over the past month.)

At the same time, the record output from wind and solar saw electricity generation from gas falling 25% year-on-year in March 2026 to the lowest level ever recorded for the month.

This meant that gas was setting the price of electricity roughly 25% less often in March 2026 than in the same month in 2022, when fossil-fuel prices spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Original article by Simon Evans and Ho Woo Nam republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. 

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