2023 statistics: How much did we generate and how much carbon did we save?
We’re starting the new year with some fantastic news.
In 2023, our community of renewable generators exported a huge amount of clean power to the UK grid. As a result, the homes and businesses that chose Good Energy have made impressive carbon savings.
We break down the statistics in this article.
Our renewable generator community exported 617 GWh of clean power
In 2023, our community of generators exported enough renewable electricity to power all of the UK’s electric vehicles for three and a half months*.
According to our partner, ZapMap, there are nearly 1 million EVs on UK roads, making this a sum worth celebrating.
Put another way, this is enough renewable electricity to power 228,493 average UK houses for a whole year.
Our customers made impressive carbon savings
Together, our customers saved a huge 119,277 tonnes of carbon in 2023.
This is equivalent to planting 119,277 trees – enough to cover 150 football pitches.
All by choosing to power their homes and businesses with our 100% renewable electricity and our green gas rather than the UK standard fuel mix.
Our calculations
*Our renewable generation stats
There are 975,000 EVs registered on Britain’s roads, and each one is expected to drive an average of 6,600 miles a year. On average, EVs use 0.32 kWh of electricity per mile.
We multiplied the average annual mileage of 6,600 by 0.32 kWh to determine that each electric car will consume an average of 2112 kWh of power each year. We then multiplied that number by the number of electric cars on the road, 975,000. This got us the figure of 2,059,200,000 kWh (or 2059 GWh).
In 2023, we bought 616.931 GWh of renewable power from our community of renewable generators, to match what our customers use.
616.931 GWh divided by 2059 GWh equals 0.29 years. Roughly three and a half months.
**Our carbon saving stats
In 2023, 56% of the UK fuel mix was low carbon sources – either renewable or nuclear. 33% came from fossil fuels and 10% from imports or waste incineration.
The carbon intensity of this fuel mix was on average 0.22kg of carbon dioxide per kWh (gCO2/kWh).
At Good Energy, our forecasting and trading teams manage to match our customers demand with renewable electricity in real time, over 90% of the time. That means that for the most part, the renewable electricity generated by our generators is used by our customers all within the same half hour period. Over the course of a year, we make sure enough 100% renewable electricity is added to the grid to match what our customers are using.
So to work out the amount of carbon our customers saved in 2023, we multiplied 0.22kg/kWh by our total estimated customer demand for 2023 of 499.995 GWh. We then subtracted the small carbon intensity associated with our electricity.
We then added on the carbon savings from our gas. 10% of the gas we supply is biogas produced here in Britain, which comes with a very small carbon footprint. The rest is offset by investing in projects that improve access to green energy around the world. We haven’t included this offsetting in our carbon saving calculations.
