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Ireland’s power grid recorded its cleanest month yet in February 2025 thanks to a new sub-sea cable linking the country and Wales.
The context: The 190km Greenlink interconnector, commissioned in late January, “is creating a new normal for carbon emissions in Irish electricity,” according to local research group Green Collective. “This is the single biggest infrastructural change on the grid since the synchronous condenser in 2022 and we are now seeing the grid getting greener in the face of rising demand.”
Interconnectors are seen as a critical enabler of the energy transition because they allow wind and solar energy to be shared across wider geographic areas, effectively smoothing out fluctuations in supply by balancing out periods of high generation in one area with low output in another. This, in turn, helps to reduce curtailment (wasted output from clean technologies).
The latest: Fossil fuels’ contribution to Ireland’s power generation reached an all-time low in February, with the total share of gas, coal, waste and oil slumping to 38.3% of all-island electricity demand, according to Green Collective’s analysis.
That meant roughly 187 grams of carbon dioxide were emitted per kilowatt-hour of electricity generation. The previous record, set in March 2024, was 208gCO₂/kWh.
Thanks in part to Greenlink, imports of mostly clean power from Britain (where renewables, nuclear and storage comprised 56% of the mix) covered 11.5% of Ireland’s demand in February, while 3.9% of Irish generation was exported. On February 27, imports covered 25% of the day’s demand, also a record for the Irish grid. And during periods of excess wind output, more could be exported than before.
Renewable energy generation, mainly from wind farms, equated to 53% of Ireland’s power demand in February.
While solar output covered just 1.1% of demand in February, a surge in large-scale installations means “it will only be year or two before solar is more significant on the grid than hydro, even in winter months.”
Solar has already surpassed hydro’s contribution in the middle of the day, even in winter, Green Collective said.
In 2024, fossil fuels met less than half of Ireland’s electricity needs for the first time, the organisation said in a previous report.
Coal-fired generation was down 75% from 2021 levels and is expected to come to an end in the months ahead. Ireland’s planning body has issued preliminary approvals for the country’s last coal plant to fully switch to oil combustion, and that should happen “towards the end of 2025,” per Green Collective.
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