After more than 140 years, Britain is phasing out coal-fired electricity generation. The last coal-fired power station in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, south-west of Nottingham, will close on Tuesday. This makes Britain the first wealthy industrial country to phase out coal.
The think tank E3G wrote a few days ago: “The birthplace of coal-fired power generation is about to go coal-free.”
The Conservative government of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson brought forward the coal phase-out by another year in June 2021. In the future, only clean electricity will be used.
State Secretary for Energy: “New era of good jobs”
Coal workers can be proud of having supplied the country with energy for more than 140 years, says Secretary of State for Energy Michael Shanks of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, who has been in government since early July. “The coal era may be coming to an end, but a new era of good energy jobs is just beginning for our country.” This included wind energy and new technologies such as CO2 capture and storage.
This graph shows how coal power has dominated electricity generation in Britain in recent decades:
Britain wants to become a ‘clean energy superpower’.
“This work helps strengthen our energy security and independence, protect families from international fossil fuel price increases, create jobs and fight climate change,” Shanks said. Britain must become “a clean energy superpower”.
Nuclear energy makes the phasing out of coal possible
Just over 100 years ago, almost all electricity in Britain was generated by burning coal. Nowadays, coal hardly plays a role anymore. In 2023, the share of the energy mix was 1.3 percent. Britain’s significantly earlier phase-out of coal compared to Germany is also possible because the country remains dependent on nuclear power for energy generation. In Germany, the phasing out of coal by 2038 has been agreed. The traffic light had decided to “ideally” move the date forward to 2030.
Since the first power station opened in 1882, Britain’s coal-fired power stations have burned a total of 4.6 billion tonnes of coal and emitted 10.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) – more than most countries have ever produced from any source, according to figures the climate portal Carbon Brief.
“We are way ahead of the curve on coal,” British climate adviser Chris Stark told the Times. “Far ahead than other G7 economies.” The head of power station operator Uniper, Michael Lewis, told the newspaper that the end of Ratcliffe was “a huge deal – locally, nationally, internationally”. The factory opened in 1968. In June a train brought the last delivery of 1,650 tons of coal.
Source: Krone
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