142 years of reliance on the highly polluting fossil fuel came to an end this week as the country’s last power station to run on ‘black gold’ was taken offline.
With the closure of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar facility, Britain has joined more than one-third of OECD nations in completely turning its back on coal for electricity production. The event was celebrated by Energy Minister Michael Shanks, who also paid tribute to the workers that helped keep lights on for so long.
‘Today’s closure at Ratcliffe marks the end of an era and coal workers can be rightly proud of their work powering our country for over 140 years,’ he said. ‘We owe generations a debt of gratitude as a country. The era of coal might be ending, but a new age of good energy jobs for our country is just beginning.’
‘King Coal is dead,’ added Lord Deben, Chair of the Climate Change Committee. ‘Long live his clean successors. This is the day we finally recognise that we can have power without it costing the Earth.’
Decommissioning Ratcliffe follows a rapid shift from coal over the past decade. Energy think tank Ember reports the fuel accounted for 39% of all UK electricity production in 2012, but by 2019 this had fallen to 2%.
Carbon pricing, offshore wind investment, market reforms in support of renewables, grid investment and setting a 2025 target for exiting coal are all cited as expediting transition. A combination of policy and finance that Ember’s Managing Director, Phil MacDonald, described as ‘both the carrots and the sticks.’
Britain’s rapid decline in coal reliance has helped stop an estimated 880million tonnes of emissions from entering the atmosphere. This equates to more than double the UK’s economy-wide greenhouse gas output for 2023. Monetarily, some £2.9billion has been saved in the process.
Britain is not alone in achieving impressive results in the journey away from coal, though. E3G reports that similar progress has been made globally since the 2015 Paris Agreement. During that time, coal capacity has fallen worldwide by 70% during that time. In comparison, the cost of solar has dropped by 90% and offshore wind by 70% in the same period. Globally, just 17% of OECD electricity generation now comes from coal, more than 50% less than the 2007 peak of 36%.
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