In recent days it has been widely trumpeted that renewable energy produced a record amount of electricity in Great Britain in 2025. Where, though, is the mention of where it is coming from? It seems to me time to blow our own trumpet.

According to BBC analysis of provisional figures from the National Energy System Operator (NESO), wind was the biggest single source of electricity. It generated nearly 30% of Great Britain’s electricity last year, up slightly on 2024, but there was also a significant rise in solar, which generated 6%, and gas was still responsible for 27%.

Much of that wind energy is from Scotland, which continues, as ever, a strong part in tackling climate change and bringing down UK greenhouse gas emissions. Over two thirds of the UK’s onshore wind capacity is in Scotland, and just under a fifth of current offshore wind capacity.

But before I move on to bigging-up our hard work, a quick, more-sobering note. All of this sounds like fantastic news, except that behind these figures is the fact that efforts to decarbonise the grid, effectively stalled last year.

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Analysis by Carbon Brief, for instance, showed that though the fleet of wind, solar and biomass power plants all set new records in 2025, but electricity from gas still went up.

There are a number of reasons for this. UK coal generation ended in late 2025 and nuclear power hit its lowest level in half a century.

“In addition,” the Carbon Brief article says, “there was a 1% rise in UK electricity demand – after years of decline – as electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps and data centres connected to the grid in larger numbers.”

We are now at a turning point where it appears the electrification is properly coming online, and the result, overall, according to Carbon Brief is that UK electricity became “slightly more polluting in 2025” .

And this is all, by the way, occurring against a backdrop of climate change in which the Met Office predicted last month that 2025 would be the UK’s hottest year on record, in which global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are projected to reach a record 38.1 billion metric tons, and increasingly experts are saying that keeping within a 1.5C goal is implausible.

It is occurring in a world in which renewables, alongside energy efficiency improvements, have been the most important drivers in reducing emissions.

But back to Scotland’s contribution. We can, of course, celebrate the efforts and progress made. The Scottish Government has not yet published renewable energy generation data for all of 2025, but we know that the third quarter saw the most renewable electricity generated in the third quarter of any year. Scotland is also exporting a great deal of it, with n 2024 21.0 TWh going south and just 1.3TWh imported.

Also, if we look at the data NESO published on monthly operational metered wind output in 2025, we see Scotland heavy lifting, producing nearly 55% of output for Britain, with only 8% of the population.

Well done. But this contribution doesn’t come without some associated negatives. There is, for instance, the question, raised increasingly frequently, of the impact of renewables infrastructure on Scotland’s landscape and environment, and of whether jobs and reduced bills are coming to areas with renewables infrastructure.

There is also the issue of curtailment due to inadequate grid development. In the first half of 2025, Scottish wind farms were paid not to produce 37 per cent of their planned output, accounting for 86 per cent of the total 4.6 terawatt hours of electricity curtailed across Britain. Not only is this costly, but a waste.

Whether you choose to celebrate Scotland’s significant contribution to grid decarbonisation, depends on your point of view on climate change and other environmental impacts, political ideology, and possibly also location.

I mostly choose to celebrate. That said, there are complexities here worth mentioning. One criticism is that Scotland already produces, through onshore wind alone, more than it needs, and enough for its forecast demand even out to 2050.

Winds of Change on offshore wind and transmission charges (Image: Derek McArthur)

When I delved into the figures earlier this year, I found that currently Scotland has an onshore wind capacity of 10GW, and a gross peak demand of 4GW – so yes we are producing far more than our needs. But, looking ahead, I also saw that NESO, in its Ten Year Statement estimates gross peak demand for Scotland in 2050 at between 8.5GW and 11GW depending on what degree of electrification takes place. We might imagine we are almost already there.

However, in a renewables centred system, where generation is intermittent, capacity needs to be significantly higher than peak demand. There is also, in any case, the rest of Britain, and NESO has also said: “Scotland will be expected to export power into the rest of Great Britain most of the time.”

What’s clear is that much of the generation being built here is not for the population of Scotland. We are gearing up for sending further electricity south of the border, and as exports elsewhere, for green hydrogen production, and, also, it seems, energy-guzzling data centres.

A growth-based paradigm lies at the heart of this. Electricity, so the story goes, will fuel growth, and also, once generation and grid infrastructure are built (delivered by a market-driven system). the demand will come. Maybe it will be data centres.

Meanwhile, one of the most unknowable and contentious areas for increased demand are those data centres. In its annual Future Energy Scenarios forecast, NESO said that energy use from these centres, which are set to surge due to growth in AI, could lead to a demand ranging vastly from 30TWh to 71 TWh by 2050.

The UK Government meanwhile has been pushing for a rapid increase in deployments, with as much as 20% of demand possibly “located in Scotland, helping reduce network constraints.”

So, looking ahead to 2026, what can we predict? Certainly more Scottish renewables generation, more records broken, more backlash over onshore wind, more criticisms of curtailment, more worries about offshore wind supply chains and costs and a rising questioning of the data centre goldrush in Scotland.

But also, I hope, a remembering of how important clean energy is in fighting climate change, of the ‘why’ of all this.

And all in an election year. Strap in for a gusty ride.