European Grid Index

How clean the grid is for European data centres, month by month

In the September 2026 issue, published on 15 October 2026, Norway (NO2) had the cleanest grid of 12 European power markets at 24 g CO2e/kWh, and Poland the most carbon per kWh at 547 g. Each issue is one monthly reading of grid carbon intensity for a constant load, and what a load that can wait would have avoided, with the same method every month so the issues compare.

Latest: September 202612 markets rankedNext: October 2026, on 3 November 2026

Grid carbon intensity, September 2026

Monthly mean seen by a constant load, g CO2e/kWh, cleanest first.

Read the September 2026 issue
  1. 1Norway (NO2)24 gSep 2025: 23On the year: +5%
  2. 2Sweden (SE3)30 gSep 2025: 24On the year: +25%
  3. 3France36 gSep 2025: 24On the year: +51%
  4. 4Finland54 gSep 2025: 52On the year: +4%
  5. 5Austria77 gSep 2025: 53On the year: +44%
  6. 6Great Britain154 gSep 2025: 166On the year: −7%
  7. 7Spain154 gSep 2025: 136On the year: +13%
  8. 8Ireland234 gSep 2025: 250On the year: −7%
  9. 9Belgium250 gSep 2025: 123On the year: +103%
  10. 10Italy (North)324 gSep 2025: 296On the year: +10%
  11. 11Germany348 gSep 2025: 303On the year: +15%
  12. 12Poland547 gSep 2025: 562On the year: −3%

Computed but not ranked: the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark (DK1). The issue explains why.

Every issue

A new issue on the third of each month, covering the month before.

How the Index is built

  • Each hour, every fuel’s output in a market is multiplied by a lifecycle emission factor and divided by total output. The month’s figure is the mean of those hours.
  • Production-based: imports are not counted, and pumped-storage output is left out.
  • An hour counts only when every material fuel reports in it; a market needs 80% of its hours to be ranked.
  • The flexible-load figures in each issue are an upper bound with perfect foresight.

Source: ENTSO-E Transparency Platform; NESO Carbon Intensity API, CC BY 4.0. Calculations ScienceShot. Cite as: ScienceShot, European Grid Index for data centres, with the issue’s month and link. Embed the latest ranking.

ScienceShot calculation.

Cite this page

ScienceShot. (2026). European Grid Index for data centres [Online calculator]. https://scienceshot.com/grid-index

@misc{scienceshot-grid-index-2026,
  author = {{ScienceShot}},
  title  = {{European Grid Index for data centres}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Online calculator},
  url    = {https://scienceshot.com/grid-index}
}