Today sees the closure of the UK’s last coal power station.

September 30, 2024 1:33 AM

How the UK became the first G7 nation to phase out coal generation. When the UK privatised its electricity sector in 1990, around 65% of its generation came from coal. From tomorrow, that figure is 0%. Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station was commissioned 60 years ago and today generates its last kWh. It is the last of a chain of coal burning generators that have closed over the last 34 years.

Coal initially began to be displaced by 1990s ‘dash for gas’ arising from the superior economics of natural gas for generation. Generation from coal was further limited by EU emissions regulation limiting operation. Finally, falling costs for wind and solar, plus carbon taxes for fossil fuels added enough costs to favour renewable generation over burning coal. Around 46% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2023, with the rest largely from gas (so still plenty to do but gas generation use is also down over the last 15 years).

This represents a shift in the emissions related to electricity consumption from over 600gCO2 for an average kWh of electricity in 1990 to an average figure of just 162g/kWh in 2023. This, alongside falling demand since 2008 mean UK emissions from electricity are now were they were in 1957.

Other countries have also seen substantive changes in their coal use for electrical generation, with Denmark, Greece, Spain and Portugal notable in Europe, while more widely, the US, Chile and Israel have seen big shifts in electrical fuel sources.

posted by biffa (19 comments total)

There's so much to be depressed about when it comes to Britain and the hole it's dig for itself, but absolutely not this: this is Britain digging itself out of one.

Thanks, biffa. Great graphs on that first link, especially "Chart showing British electricity generation is shifting away from fossil fuels". It isn't just being replaced by gas, it's a genuine shift away from carbon.
posted by rory at 3:02 AM on September 30 [12 favorites]

The huge clouds from the cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar have been part of the skyline for the whole time I've lived here (a few miles away). It'll be odd to never see them again, but not unwelcome.
posted by pipeski at 3:27 AM on September 30 [5 favorites]

I want to put in a comment to specifically thank Kate Morley for her National Grid Overview Page. It was this that showed me just how much offshore wind had become a mainstay of the British power grid by 2020. Wind and Gas do a sort of dance throughout the year, with turbines spinning up when the Shipping Forecast goes calm, and by and large it still leaves gas in a pretty reliable (though by no means distant) second place.

We still burn a lot of gas for kitchen hobs and combination boilers that heat both our bathwater and our radiators. There's still a definite chance for demand from industrial development or mass migration to domestic heat pumps to force us to rebalance our supply, but at least it won't involve coal any longer.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:32 AM on September 30 [2 favorites]

This is indeed massively good news!

Pretty much everything is better than coal: solar and wind. Gas (though it comes with strings from Gazprom and Putin.) Even nuclear!
posted by anotherpanacea at 5:22 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]

This is a bit of a, heh, smokescreen, when the UK is still burning the heck out of imported woodpellets. We're apparently the world's largest woodpellet consumer.

Great that we shut the coal burning plant down hahahahahahahahaoh my sideshahaha

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/09/biomass-power-station-produced-four-times-emissions-of-uk-coal-plant-says-report
posted by bookbook at 5:23 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]

Context is important for really understanding this. A huge part of Britain success is due to dark motivations. The Tories absolutely hated coal miners because they had strong unions and they decentralized some of Britain's political power from London to the despised Midlands. So Thatcher pretty much nuked the coal miners. Something that is politically possible in parliamentary system where Prime Ministers can have tremendous unchecked centralized power. Weird how sometimes the bad things the baddies do can have downstream positive externalities that they would likely have never intended. If it were not for the Tory hatred of coal miners this likely would not have happened as quickly as it did.
posted by srboisvert at 5:28 AM on September 30 [18 favorites]

Unlike coal, wood pellets can be produced sustainably. I have no idea what percentage of UK imports meet those criteria, but there a big difference between a fossil fuel and young carbon that literally grows on trees.

Heck some sources of cellulosic biofuels (like Miscanthus) can be produced as a net carbon sink!
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:29 AM on September 30 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the wood burning is pretty much all Drax, an old coal power station converted to run on biomass, which is brought in from overseas. Its got a 3.9GW capacity so pretty huge. While theoretically wood pellets can be sustainable, there are lots of questions as to how sustainable Drax is in reality. I was on Stockport station a few years past when the Drax train went past. And past, and past.

The hate for the miners is a compelling storyline but I'm not convinced its the only motivator for the initial shift to gas. CEGB was gold plating the electricity system, building more coal plants and creating an unnecessarily large capacity margin. The privatisation presented circumstances for investment in cheaper technology once it was up to private companies. The margin reduced, and average cost went down. From a union perspective, the number of jobs lost in the electricity and gas sector in the decade following privatisation was probably a more direct loss. See page 8 here. The good news is that RE is more employment intensive and jobs have gone up in the sector in the last 15 years.
posted by biffa at 5:50 AM on September 30 [4 favorites]

Unlike coal, also, wood pellets don't release terrifying amounts of heavy metals and radiation into the surrounding area. You get more increased radiation exposure outside a coal plant than you would have even next to Three Mile Island during the incident.

And absolutely, biomass fuels are the next hurdle. But we were confidently told for decades that "all that green crap" would never live up to even a fraction of fossil fuels' production. And yet here we are, with wind now producing nearly half of Britain's electricity despite strict regulations preventing its use on our shores. And we have solid and productive solar power generation in Britain, where direct insolation is something of a national joke.

Right now the big story is the way in which natural gas originally took over as "The New Coal". It still holds some of that role, but most of the production from gas ramps up and down wildly in its new role as "Covering the gaps while the wind dies down".

Incidenatlly, Kate Morley addressed this shutdown on Mastodon, today:

Later today Britain’s last remaining coal-fired power station will shut down, bringing to a close 142 years of power generation that began when the world’s first coal-fired power station, at 57 Holborn Viaduct in London, started operation on 12th January 1882.

When I created grid.iamkate.com in 2012, coal accounted for 40% of Britain’s power generation. It was overtaken by gas in 2015, nuclear and wind in 2016, and solar in 2019. As I write this, wind is producing 40% of Britain’s power.

posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:04 AM on September 30 [8 favorites]

That's a really good article, thanks. This particular plant shutting down might not be a huge deal in actual CO₂ terms, but it does feel quietly momentous. For Britain in particular to look up from gazing at its historic role in the world and remember that the future is out there too.

I love Kate Morley's site, I'm looking forward to seeing that number hit 0% later today.
posted by lucidium at 6:21 AM on September 30 [3 favorites]

No more pit ponies.
posted by SPrintF at 7:42 AM on September 30 [3 favorites]

Here in Alberta (the Texas of the North) the last coal-based power station shut down earlier this year, about 6 years ahead of the schedule once thought 'impossible' (in 2001 coal accounted for about 80% of the province's power).

Of course the shift was largely to natural gas but it's an improvement (and a lesson of how impossible 'impossible' is).

It's easy to miss but stuff is getting done.
posted by mazola at 8:38 AM on September 30 [6 favorites]

Great graphs on that first link, especially "Chart showing British electricity generation is shifting away from fossil fuels".

I think this is a really important part of this. I think most UK academics think this is obvious but I had a review of an academic paper within the last 6 month which said there was no evidence that RE was pushing out FF, which I found astonishing since the profiles for Denmark, Germany and others, as well as the UK, seem to make this pretty unequivocal. The argument remains however, and I couldn't find any good economics papers to back it up, so if anyone out there is an energy economist, you might want to start writing a paper which would be a sure-fire citation magnet.
posted by biffa at 9:36 AM on September 30 [1 favorite]

Hello from your colonial subjects in the Southeastern USA

I do think the shift to wood pellets has its positives, it does show that a state can exert capital discipline over industry like coal. Although that happened alongside labor conflict, as everyone knows

However, wood pellets do suck as an industry, and they should not be considered "Clean energy" in any way.

You are relying on the racism in Mississippi and Louisiana to greenwash your climate emissions, UK, and we will learn again, too late, that was not a good idea.

I would urge all to look up the Dogwood Alliance in the USA about the US contribution to wood pellets, and it's impact on forest soils
posted by eustatic at 9:38 AM on September 30 [5 favorites]

It’s so good to be able to celebrate progress, particularly since this does represent a genuine shift to renewable energy generation. I really do hope and expect further progress, current imperfections notwithstanding.
posted by plonkee at 9:59 AM on September 30

This is great and amazing considering where we were last century. It's just mind blowing how fast we are building out renewables. Never thought I'd see the case where renewable power was cheaper than coal even ignoring the externalities.

Here in Alberta (the Texas of the North) the last coal-based power station shut down earlier this year, about 6 years ahead of the schedule once thought 'impossible'

Impossible by the right wing parties soaked in oil money. Easily accomplished thanks to the only left wing government in the province in decades.
posted by Mitheral at 12:04 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]

All caveats aside, this is a genuine reason for celebration. The biggest caveat seems to be wood pellets, which I can't for the life of me see how these are considered as 'green' without a lot of political finagling of the facts, just one of which is the fossil fuel burned to transport it halfway around the world.

Anyway, genuine congratulations to the UK, who have managed to put many countries to shame at a time when their government has been very much occupied with all sorts of new, ongoing and of-its-own-making dramas and catastrophes.
posted by dg at 4:06 PM on September 30 [3 favorites]

XKCD and some other comments I’ve seen seem to mix this up with the end of coal mining in the UK, which is a different (though not unrelated) matter. Not all coal burned in UK power plants was mined here, and not all coal mined here was burned in power plants.
The last deep coal mine in the UK closed in 2015, but the last significant open-cast mine operated until 2023, and it was only recently that plans for a new (!) deep mine were cancelled following a legal challenge. One drift mine is still working, though I believe none of the coal is burned (it’s ground up to make carbon for filters, apparently).
posted by Phanx at 11:48 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]

Monthly average electricity prices based on day-ahead baseload contracts in Great Britain from January 2013 to June 2024
posted by BWA at 6:31 AM on October 1