UK Carbon Intensity Scraper — Grid CO₂, Fuel Mix & Regional Data

Scrape the carbon intensity of the UK electricity grid straight from the official National Grid ESO / Carbon Intensity API — no API key, no login, no proxy required.

Get half-hourly gCO₂/kWh forecasts and actuals, the live generation fuel mix (wind, solar, gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro, coal, imports), and per-region carbon intensity for all 18 UK DNO areas — as clean, flat rows ready for BI tools, dashboards and ESG models.

---

What you get

Mode	What it returns	Typical row count
intensity	National half-hourly carbon intensity (forecast, actual, index)	1 (current) or 48 per day
generation	National generation fuel mix, one row per fuel	9 per settlement period
regional	Carbon intensity + full fuel mix per DNO region	18 per settlement period

All three modes accept an optional date range for historical back-fill.

---

Use cases

• ESG & carbon reporting — attribute location-based Scope 2 emissions to the actual half-hour your load ran, instead of an annual grid average.
• Smart EV / battery charging — shift charging into "low" and "very low" intensity windows, or into the greenest DNO region.
• Energy apps & dashboards — power a live "how green is the grid right now?" widget with wind/solar share and a colour-coded index.
• Climate research — build multi-year half-hourly datasets of UK grid carbon intensity and fuel mix for decarbonisation studies.

---

Input

{
  "mode": "regional",
  "fromDate": "2026-07-01T00:00Z",
  "toDate": "2026-07-02T00:00Z",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	intensity	intensity, generation or regional
fromDate	string	–	Optional ISO 8601 UTC start, e.g. 2026-07-01T00:00Z
toDate	string	–	Optional ISO 8601 UTC end. Set both or neither. Max 14 days per run.
maxItems	integer	500	Row cap (max 5000)

Leave fromDate / toDate empty to fetch the current settlement period — ideal for a scheduled run every 30 minutes.

---

Output samples

intensity

{
  "type": "intensity",
  "period_from": "2026-07-28T11:30:00Z",
  "period_to": "2026-07-28T12:00:00Z",
  "forecast_gco2_kwh": 48,
  "actual_gco2_kwh": 51,
  "index": "low",
  "source": "carbonintensity",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-28T12:03:35Z"
}

generation

{
  "type": "generation",
  "period_from": "2026-07-28T11:30:00Z",
  "period_to": "2026-07-28T12:00:00Z",
  "fuel": "wind",
  "percentage": 34.9,
  "source": "carbonintensity",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-28T12:03:36Z"
}

regional

{
  "type": "regional",
  "period_from": "2026-07-28T11:30:00Z",
  "period_to": "2026-07-28T12:00:00Z",
  "region_id": 1,
  "region": "North Scotland",
  "dno_region": "Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution",
  "forecast_gco2_kwh": 0,
  "index": "very low",
  "top_fuel": "wind",
  "top_fuel_pct": 94.6,
  "generation_mix": [{ "fuel": "wind", "perc": 94.6 }, { "fuel": "solar", "perc": 5.4 }],
  "source": "carbonintensity",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-28T12:03:37Z"
}

The index field uses the official bands: very low, low, moderate, high, very high.

---

Pricing

Roughly $0.5 per 1,000 rows. A run that fetches the current national intensity costs a fraction of a cent; a full day of regional data (48 periods × 18 regions = 864 rows) costs well under a dollar.

---

Tips

• Schedule it every 30 minutes to build your own half-hourly time series — the grid settles in 30-minute periods.
• regional mode is the cheapest way to find the greenest place in the UK to run a flexible workload right now.
• forecast_gco2_kwh is available for future periods; actual_gco2_kwh fills in retrospectively, so re-scrape recent windows if you need settled values.
• Data is published by National Grid ESO under the terms of the Carbon Intensity API — check their licence before redistributing.

---

Related actors

• Energy Charts Scraper — European power generation, prices and load
• Air Quality Scraper — global air quality and pollutant readings
• World Bank Scraper — macro, energy and climate indicators by country
• NOAA Weather Alerts Scraper — live US weather alerts and warnings

---

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. The Carbon Intensity API is open and free.

Do I need proxies? No. The API is datacenter friendly, so the actor runs without any proxy configuration.

How far back does history go? The upstream API serves data back to 2017, in windows of up to 14 days per request.

How accurate is it? Forecasts come from National Grid ESO's own model; actuals are derived from settlement data.