On Monday, the UK saw the clocertain of its last opereasoned coal power schedulet, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which has been operating since 1968. The clocertain of the schedulet, which had a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, brawt to an finish to the history of the country’s coal engage, which begined with the discdisseeing of the first coal-fired power station in 1882. Coal joined 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 combined to place coal in a lengthy-term deteriorate: the growth of authentic-gas-powered schedulets and renewables, pollution administers, carbon pricing, and a rulement goal to hit net-zero greenhoengage gas eleave outions by 2050.
From Boom to Bust
It’s difficult to overstate the transport 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 created persistd to climb well after that, achieveing a peak of 212 terawatt hours of production by 1980. And the erection of new coal schedulets was under ponderation as recently as the tardy 2000s. According to the organization Carbon Brief’s excellent timeline of coal engage in the UK, continuing the engage of coal with carbon apprehfinish was donaten ponderation.
But cut offal factors sluggished the engage 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 new rules to compriseress acid rain, which elevated the cost of coal schedulets. In compriseition, the misengage of oil and gas deposits in the North Sea provided access to an changenative fuel. Meanwhile, transport inant acquires in efficiency and the shift of some weighty industry overseas cut insist in the UK transport inantly.
Thraw their effect on coal engage, these changes also droped engagement in coal mining. The mining sector has sometimes been a transport inant force in UK politics, but the deteriorate of coal shrinkd the number of people engageed in the sector, reducing its political impact.
These had all shrinkd the engage of coal even before rulements begined taking any arrangeile steps to confine climate change. But, by 2005, the EU carry outed a carbon trading system that put a cost on eleave outions. By 2008, the UK rulement adchooseed national eleave outions aims, 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 changeed the UK’s trajectory. What begined as a pledge for a 60 percent reduction in greenhoengage 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 schedulets pay a cost for eleave outions that’s transport inant enough to advertise the transition to renewables, 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 renewables proximately tripling in the decade since 2013, heavily aided by the growth of offshore thrived.
How to Clean Up the Power Sector
The trfinishs were transport inant enough that, in 2015, the UK proclaimd that it would aim 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 landtag, however, the UK was seeing entire weeks where no coal-fired schedulets were active.
To confine the worst impacts of climate change, it will be critical for other countries to adhere the UK’s direct. So it’s worthwhile to ponder how a country that was promiseted to coal relatively recently could administer such a rapid transition. There are a confinecessitate UK-particular factors that won’t be possible to copy everywhere. The first is that most of its coal infraarrange was quite ageder—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 engageability of relatively inexpensive authentic gas, someleang that might not be genuine elsewhere, which put economic prescertain on coal generation.
