UK Carbon Intensity

The Official Carbon Intensity API for Great Britain developed by National Grid

Open documentation ↗

No keyHTTPSCORSEnvironment

Verified today: 100% uptime

API key

Not required

HTTPS

Supported

Browser calls

Yes, CORS enabled

Status

Live · 100/100

Overview & Architectural Role

UK Carbon Intensity provides programmatic access to the official carbon intensity api for great britain developed by national grid. Delivered over secure HTTPS protocols, it exposes structured endpoints designed to integrate cleanly into modern frontend frameworks, backend microservices, and automated data pipelines without requiring local database provisioning.

Who it is built for

Engineers building web dashboards, mobile applications, CLI utilities, or background cron workers in need of reliable environment data feeds.

Architectural Advantage

Consuming UK Carbon Intensity removes the operational overhead of running custom scrapers, orchestrating headless browser fleets, or manually seeding and maintaining a local database. Instead of reverse-engineering volatile DOM layouts or dealing with anti-bot IP blocks, your application connects directly to a standardized JSON interface that supports client-side browser execution out of the box. Zero-authentication access allows rapid prototyping and zero-credential static deployments.

What our checks found

Health score: 100/100
Reliability: 100%
Average latency: 662ms

Last checked 2026-10-24. Measured independently, not self-reported by the provider.

Core Use Cases & Architecture Ideas

Practical real-world patterns for integrating UK Carbon Intensity into software systems.

Smart Environmental IoT Controller

Feed live atmospheric data from UK Carbon Intensity into microcontrollers to dynamically govern heating, cooling, or automated window actuators.

Architecture: Edge device or serverless cron polls UK Carbon Intensity every 15 minutes, compares ambient metrics with indoor telemetry, and triggers local relays.

Logistics & Delivery Route Optimization

Adjust dispatch schedules and estimated delivery times dynamically when adverse conditions impact transit zones.

Architecture: A Node.js/Go dispatch worker queries localized status codes along shipping waypoints, dispatching customer updates via webhooks.

Context-Aware Frontend Dashboard Widget

Render dynamic UI themes and localized weather cards tailored to the user's geolocated IP coordinates.

Architecture: React/Next.js frontend fetches telemetry client-side (or through a cached server route) to render live status indicators.

Code Implementation Examples

Production-ready starting templates with error handling for UK Carbon Intensity.

// No authentication required.
// Modern native fetch with error handling
async function callApi() {
  try {
    const response = await fetch('https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api/v1/resource', {
      method: 'GET',
    headers: { Accept: 'application/json' },
    });

    if (!response.ok) {
      throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}: ${response.statusText}`);
    }

    const data = await response.json();
    console.log('Response payload:', data);
    return data;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('API request failed:', error);
    throw error;
  }
}

// callApi();

Response Payload & Live Testing

Inspect the expected JSON structure returned by UK Carbon Intensity or execute a real-time live probe directly in your browser.

Expected JSON Response Payload

Authentic sample payload structure to evaluate schema attributes before integration.

{
  "status": 200,
  "api": "UK Carbon Intensity",
  "endpoint": "/uk-carbon-intensity",
  "data": {
    "id": 101,
    "title": "UK Carbon Intensity Sample Payload",
    "description": "The Official Carbon Intensity API for Great Britain developed by National Grid",
    "verified": true,
    "category": "Environment",
    "updated_at": "2026-10-24T07:40:04.767Z"
  },
  "meta": {
    "response_time_ms": 662,
    "cached": false
  }
}

Format: application/json✓ CORS verified: Safe for direct browser calls

Integration Considerations & Best Practices

Technical factors to keep in mind when integrating UK Carbon Intensity into production environments.

Implement In-Memory or Edge Caching

Avoid triggering rate limits on public feeds by caching response payloads in Redis, Vercel KV, or standard HTTP Cache-Control headers with a 5-to-15 minute TTL.

Zero-Credential Environment Protection

While no API key is required, public keyless pools often share global rate limits. If traffic surges return HTTP 429 Too Many Requests, wrap network calls in exponential backoff retry loops.

Direct Client-Side Browser Support

CORS headers are validated and present on responses. You can safely call this endpoint directly from frontend React, Vue, or static HTML pages without an intermediary proxy server.

Validate HTTP Status Before Parsing JSON

Always inspect response.ok before executing response.json(). Upstream services returning 4xx or 502 Bad Gateway often serve HTML error pages, which cause syntax errors when parsed as JSON.

Where this listing comes from

Green Power Index for Germany (Grünstromindex/GSI)

No keyCORS

Verified today: 100% uptime

View Details

UK Carbon Intensity — common questions

Answered from what our own scheduled checks found, not from the provider's marketing.

Is UK Carbon Intensity free to use?

UK Carbon Intensity is listed in our free catalogue and required no credential when we called it. It needs no authentication at all, so you can send a request without signing up. Free tiers can still carry rate limits or non-commercial terms, so check the provider's own terms before shipping.

Does UK Carbon Intensity need an API key?

No. We called UK Carbon Intensity on 2026-10-24 with no key, no token and no Authorization header, and it responded. That is what puts it in our no-key collection.

Can I call UK Carbon Intensity from browser JavaScript?

Yes. UK Carbon Intensity returned CORS headers when we checked it, so a browser will let your page read the response. You can fetch it directly from client-side JavaScript with no proxy and no backend.

Is UK Carbon Intensity still working?

Yes, as of 2026-10-24. Our automated check reached UK Carbon Intensity and recorded a 100% reliability score with a median response time of 662 ms. We re-check on a schedule, and this page updates with the result.

Is UK Carbon Intensity available over HTTPS?

Yes. UK Carbon Intensity serves over HTTPS, so you can call it from a secure page without triggering a mixed-content block.