One hundred and forty-two years after inaugurating the world’s first coal-fired power station, the United Kingdom closed its last one on Monday. It is the first major economy to completely abandon coal to generate electricity after a decade of bipartisan regulation aimed at reducing emissions and developing cleaner alternatives.
The last working turbine at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, in central England and near Nottingham, has been switched off in a milestone for the country’s industrial revolution, historic miners’ strikes and accelerated reduction of emissions caused by the climate crisis.
The factory shut down for good at the end of Monday after a day of farewells and tributes to the workers of several generations who have worked there since its opening in 1967. The 170 current employees reached an agreement to continue with the company that owns it. , the German Uniper, or accept compensation, depending on the agreement with the unions.
David Cameron’s Conservative government announced the end of coal-fired power stations in 2015, when they represented around 20% of the electricity produced in the country. The previous government, led by Labor Gordon Brown, approved mandatory targets for reducing emissions from 1990 levels in 2008 and even committed to zero emissions by 2019. Now the symbolic shutdown has took place under the new Labor executive Keir Starmer, although it was already planned. planned months before winning the July elections.
“Today’s closure of Ratcliffe marks the end of an era and coal workers can rightly be proud of their work which has supplied our country with electricity for over 140 years. As a country, we owe gratitude to the generations,” said Energy Secretary Michael Shanks, who will attend a farewell ceremony on Tuesday at the plant that provided sufficient energy to heat 1 billion cups of tea per day.
The United Kingdom, faster
Several climate change organizations have praised the UK’s “leadership”, which has moved faster than other rich economies in reducing emissions.
Ed Matthew, campaign manager think tank dedicated to climate change E3G, explains to elDiario.es that one of the keys for which the United Kingdom has gone faster than the rest of the G7 economies has been the clarity of the policies approved by the Conservatives and Labor. After the 2008 law, the 2015 announcement “gave companies and investors long-term clarity that coal was going to be phased out.” And that was followed by carbon taxes that made it a bad economic bet and public investment in renewable energy, particularly offshore wind turbines. “As a result, in 12 years we went from 40% coal in our energy mix to 0%,” he explains. “Essentially, there was a need for a long-term plan to make the polluting coal sector less economically viable and develop an alternative, clean energy source. »
According to E3G data, the most significant event since 2012 is the growth of wind energy, up to 315%, and solar energy. The new government is launching a new public company based in Scotland, Green Energy, to invest in renewable energy.
In addition to renewable energy, as in the last decade, nuclear energy represents around 16% of production. A new plant is under construction, but others are being closed, so it is expected that the share of nuclear energy will not increase.
In Europe, Sweden, Portugal, Belgium and Austria have already achieved the goal of closing all coal-fired power plants. In Spain, where half of energy production comes from renewables, coal accounted for 1.5% of the total in 2023. Almost all coal mines closed in Spain in 2018, three years after the UK . Coal burned at the Ratcliffe power station was imported from the US, Colombia or the EU.
In most developed countries, most coal-fired power plants will close by 2030, but globally, 75% of plants do not have an expiration date, according to the PPCA, an international alliance of national and regional governments aimed at decommissioning coal.
The first
The world’s first coal-fired power station to produce electricity for public use was the Holborn Viaduct in central London and was created in January 1882 by Thomas Edison to light streetlights and buildings in the area for a few months before opening the first one. one in New York. The United Kingdom had already been using coal for industrial and railway production for decades and was until 1939 the world’s largest exporter of coal.
This is also where the word ““smog”“smoke” mixture (smoke) and “fog” (fog) to refer to the pollution that flooded British cities. The most dramatic episode of pollution occurred in December 1952, when a toxic cloud worsened by weather conditions enveloped the city of London for four days and caused the deaths of at least 4,000 people. In response to this crisis, several pieces of legislation have been passed against black smoke in urban areas.
The UK pledged to close the last coal-fired power station before 2025 and achieved this by discouraging its use through taxes while making other options cheaper. Unlike in the United States or Germany, the United Kingdom has not approved the construction of any new coal-fired power plants since 2010.
The new government will continue its goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, although in the final months of his administration Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reversed some measures to achieve this and delayed a ban on gas boilers. gas and diesel sales. and gasoline cars. The Starmer government has pledged to bring emissions from electricity generation to zero by 2030, five years earlier than the previous target and which also includes a withdrawal from the gas market.
This decline has made it more difficult to achieve the emissions reduction target. “There is no room for error,” says Matthew, who highlights the importance of the new government lifting the veto on onshore wind turbines and approving new solar energy projects.
Renewable energy boom
Coal accounted for up to 80% of the UK’s electricity generation in the early 1980s and was the main source until 1994, when it began to decline, supplanted by natural gas from the fields from the North Sea, nuclear energy, wind and solar energy. Last year, 44% of the country’s electricity came from renewable energy and Carbon Filemedia specializing in climate change, estimates that this year it will be 50%. Coal now represents barely 1% of electricity production, with some exceptional moments such as the Arctic cold spell lasting a few weeks last winter.
In January this year, the Ratcliffe plant operated at full capacity for what is expected to be the last time. “I have never seen the team so calm. You could tell people were thinking about that moment… It was emotional for all of us,” he explained in April to Tutor Ian Jackson, the employee responsible for the night shifts who had worked there for 30 years. It was then already the only coal-fired power station in the United Kingdom, after the closure of the penultimate station, in Northern Ireland, a few months earlier.
The factory, on which much of the working region of central England depended for electricity, previously employed around 3,000 people, but now there are around 170 left. Some workers have already been transferred to other factories of electricity production with gas from the Uniper company, but the majority. will continue to work at the factory while the closure work is carried out, which could last a few years, and the fate of the place is decided.
Destroying the towers can be a real headache in a particularly populated area and near a railway junction. Some are calling for it to be preserved for its architectural value or for part of it to be transformed into a museum of the industrial revolution. One of the projects is to build a center specializing in the development of technologies to produce energy without emissions on the site where the factory is currently located.
Usually, power plant towers are destroyed. “The local community should have a say in this decision,” says Ed Matthew. “It is possible to preserve them in our energy architectural heritage. It would be even better if we could use them somehow, but that hasn’t happened so far. »
