UK Carbon Intensity API

Overview

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request

GET https://api.carbonintensity.org.uk/intensity

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 187 bytes

Response time

1046 ms (median of 3) · fastest 1027 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by Amazon

Browser CORS

Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://api.carbonintensity.org.uk/intensity on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "data": [
    {
      "from": "2026-08-10T19:00Z",
      "to": "2026-08-10T19:30Z",
      "intensity": {
        "…": "(3 more fields)"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Implementation Example

Request skeleton. The URL below is this API's documentation page, not a live endpoint — swap in the path you need from the provider's docs before running it.

const url = "https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api-definitions/";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api-definitions/"
headers = {}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl -H "Accept: application/json" https://api.carbonintensity.org.uk/intensity

What Can You Build?

// Fetch environmental data
const response = await fetch(`https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api-definitions/#carbon-intensity-api-v1-0-0`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log('Environmental data:', data);
const quality = data.aqi || data.air_quality || data;
console.log('Air quality index:', quality);

// Get environmental statistics
const response = await fetch(`https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api-definitions/#carbon-intensity-api-v1-0-0`);
const data = await response.json();
const metrics = data.data || data.results || data;
console.log('Environment report:', metrics);
document.getElementById('env-data').innerHTML =
  `<pre>${JSON.stringify(metrics, null, 2)}</pre>`;

// Aggregate environmental indicators
const response = await fetch(`https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api-definitions/#carbon-intensity-api-v1-0-0`);
const data = await response.json();
const indicators = Array.isArray(data) ? data : [data];
indicators.forEach(ind => {
  console.log(`${ind.name || ind.indicator || 'Metric'}: ${ind.value || JSON.stringify(ind)}`);
});

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

{
  "error": {
    "code": "400 Bad Request",
    "message": "Please enter a valid datetime in ISO8601 format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmZ e.g. /intensity/2017-08-25T15:30Z"
  }
}

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.