On Monday, the UK saw the closure of its last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which had been in operation since 1968. the country’s coal consumption, which began with the opening of the first coal-fired power station in 1882. Coal plays an important role in the UK’s electricity system at present, in some years providing more than 90 per cent of its total electricity.
But several factors have combined to put coal in long-term decline: the growth of natural gas-fired plants and renewables, pollution controls, carbon pricing, and the government’s goal of hitting net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
From Boom to Bust
It is hard to overstate the importance of coal to the UK grid. It provided more than 90 percent of the UK’s electricity as recently as 1956. Total power generation continued to rise steadily thereafter, reaching a peak of 212 terawatt hours of production in 1980. And the construction of new coal fields was considered. as recently as the late 2000s. According to the organization’s excellent Carbon Brief timeline for the use of coal in the UK, continued use of coal with carbon sequestration was considered.
But several factors have reduced fuel consumption ahead of any climate targets set by the UK, some of which are consistent with the US situation. The European Union, which included the UK at the time, introduced new rules to deal with acid rain, which raised the cost of coal plants. In addition, the exploitation of oil and gas deposits in the North Sea provided access to alternative fuel. Meanwhile, huge gains in efficiency and the shifting of some heavy industry overseas have significantly reduced demand in the UK.
Through their effect on coal consumption, these changes also reduced coal mining employment. The mining sector has at times been a powerful force in UK politics, but the decline of coal has reduced the number of people employed in the sector, reducing its political influence.
All of this had reduced the use of coal even before governments started taking any aggressive measures to mitigate climate change. But, in 2005, the EU implemented a carbon trading system that put a cost on carbon emissions. In 2008, the UK government implemented national emissions targets, which have been maintained and strengthened since then by both Labor and Conservative governments until Rishi Sunak, who was voted out of office before changing the UK approach. What started as a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 now requires the UK to hit zero by that date.
This includes a carbon price that ensures fossil fuel plants pay carbon emissions costs that are significant enough to promote a switch to renewables, even if the EU’s wind trading scheme prices are too low for that. And that change has been rapid, with total renewable generation nearly tripling in the decade since 2013, largely helped by the growth of offshore wind.
How to Clean Up the Energy Sector
The trends were significant enough that, in 2015, the UK announced it would target the end of coal by 2025, despite the fact that coal’s first day on the grid won’t arrive until two years later. But two years after that mark, however, the UK saw every week where no coal-fired plants were operating.
To reduce the worst impacts of climate change, it will be important for other countries to follow the UK’s lead. So it is worth considering how a country that has recently committed to coal can manage this rapid change. There are a few features specific to the UK that cannot be replicated everywhere. The first is that much of its coal-fired infrastructure was quite old—the Ratcliffe-on-Soar days of the 1960s—so it needed to be replaced at any cost. Part of the reason for its aging coal fleet was the local availability of relatively cheap natural gas, something that may not be true in other areas, putting economic pressure on coal production.
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