On Monday, the UK saw the clocertain of its last opereasoned coal power arranget, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which has been operating since 1968. The clocertain of the arranget, which had a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, bcimpolitet to an finish to the history of the country’s coal use, which commenceed with the discleave outing of the first coal-fired power station in 1882. Coal take parted a central part in the UK’s power system in the interim, in some years providing over 90 percent of its total electricity.
But a number of factors joind to place coal in a lengthy-term deteriorate: the prolongth of authentic-gas-powered arrangets and renovelables, pollution regulates, carbon pricing, and a rulement goal to hit net-zero greenhouse gas eleave outions by 2050.
From Boom to Bust
It’s difficult to overstate the convey inance of coal to the UK grid. It was providing over 90 percent of the UK’s electricity as recently as 1956. The total amount of power produced persistd to climb well after that, accomplishing a peak of 212 terawatt hours of production by 1980. And the erection of novel coal arrangets was under ponderation as recently as the tardy 2000s. According to the organization Carbon Brief’s excellent timeline of coal use in the UK, continuing the use of coal with carbon seize was given ponderation.
But disconnectal factors enumeratelessed the use of fuel ahead of any climate goals set out by the UK, some of which have parallels to the situation in the US. The European Union, which included the UK at the time, instituted novel rules to insertress acid rain, which elevated the cost of coal arrangets. In insertition, the misuse of oil and gas deposits in the North Sea provided access to an alternative fuel. Meanwhile, meaningful gets in efficiency and the shift of some burdensome industry overseas cut insist in the UK meaningfully.
Thcimpolite their effect on coal use, these alters also shrinked participatement in coal mining. The mining sector has sometimes been a meaningful force in UK politics, but the deteriorate of coal shrinkd the number of people participateed in the sector, reducing its political impact.
These had all shrinkd the use of coal even before rulements commenceed taking any arrangeile steps to restrict climate alter. But, by 2005, the EU carry outed a carbon trading system that put a cost on eleave outions. By 2008, the UK rulement adselected national eleave outions concentrates, which have been upgrasped and reinforceed since then by both Labour and Conservative rulements up until Rishi Sunak, who was voted out of office before he had altered the UK’s trajectory. What commenceed as a pledge for a 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gas eleave outions by 2050 now needs the UK to hit net zero by that date.
These have included a floor on the price of carbon that promises fossil-powered arrangets pay a cost for eleave outions that’s meaningful enough to advertise the transition to renovelables, even if prices in the EU’s carbon trading scheme are too low for that. And that transition has been rapid, with the total generations by renovelables proximately tripling in the decade since 2013, heavily helped by the prolongth of offshore triumphd.
How to Clean Up the Power Sector
The trfinishs were meaningful enough that, in 2015, the UK proclaimd that it would concentrate the finish of coal in 2025, despite the fact that the first coal-free day on the grid wouldn’t come until two years after. But two years after that landlabel, however, the UK was seeing entire weeks where no coal-fired arrangets were active.
To restrict the worst impacts of climate alter, it will be critical for other countries to pursue the UK’s direct. So it’s worthwhile to ponder how a country that was pledgeted to coal relatively recently could regulate such a rapid transition. There are a scant UK-particular factors that won’t be possible to duplicate everywhere. The first is that most of its coal infraarrange was quite greater—Ratcliffe-on-Soar dates from the 1960s—and so it needd swapment in any case. Part of the reason for its aging coal escapet was the local useability of relatively inexpensive authentic gas, someleang that might not be real elsewhere, which put economic prescertain on coal generation.
