UK to shut last coal-fired power plant

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Energy Station has dominated the panorama of the English East Midlands for practically 60 years, looming over the small city of the identical title and a landmark on the M1 motorway bisecting Derby and Nottingham.

On the mainline railway station serving the close by East Midlands Airport, its large cooling towers stand up seemingly inside touching distance of the monitor and platform.

However on the finish of this month, the location in central England will shut its doorways, signaling the tip to polluting coal-powered electrical energy within the UK, in a landmark first for any G7 nation.

“It’ll seem very strange because it has always been there,” mentioned David Reynolds, a 74-year-old retiree who noticed the location being constructed as a toddler earlier than it started operations in 1967.

“When I was younger you could go down certain parts and you saw nothing but coal pits,” he instructed AFP.

Power transition

Coal has performed a significant half in British financial historical past, powering the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and nineteenth centuries that made the nation a worldwide superpower, and creating London’s notorious choking smog.

Even into the Eighties, it nonetheless represented 70 p.c of the nation’s electrical energy combine earlier than its share declined within the Nineties.

Within the final decade the autumn has been even sharper, slumping to 38 p.c in 2013, 5.0 p.c in 2018 then simply 1.0 p.c final 12 months.

In 2015, the then Conservative authorities mentioned that it supposed to close all coal-fired energy stations by 2025 to cut back carbon emissions.

Jess Ralston, head of vitality on the Power and Local weather Intelligence Unit think-tank, mentioned the UK’s 2030 clean-energy goal was “very ambitious”.

However she added, “It sends a very strong message that the UK is taking climate change as a matter of great importance and also that this is only the first step.”

By final 12 months, natural gas represented a 3rd of the UK’s electricity productionwhereas 1 / 4 got here from wind power and 13 p.c from nuclear energy, in keeping with electrical energy operator Nationwide Grid ESO.

“The UK managed to phase coal out so quickly largely through a combination of economics and then regulations,” Ralston mentioned.

“So larger power plants like coal plants had regulations put on them because of all the sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, all the emissions coming from the plant and that meant that it was no longer economically attractive to invest in those sorts of plants.”

The brand new Labour authorities launched its flagship inexperienced vitality plan after its election win in July, with the creation of a publicly owned physique to put money into offshore wind, tidal energy and nuclear power.

The intention is to make Britain a superpower as soon as extra, this time in “clean energy”.

As such, Ratcliffe-on-Soar’s closure on September 30 is a symbolic step within the UK’s ambition to decarbonize electrical energy by 2030, and turn into carbon impartial by 2050.

It should make the nation the primary within the G7 of wealthy nations to do away fully with coal energy electrical energy.

Italy plans to take action by subsequent 12 months, France in 2027, Canada in 2030 and Germany in 2038. Japan and the US haven’t any set dates.

‘Finish of an period’

In recent times, Ratcliffe-on-Soar Energy Station, which had the potential to energy two million properties, has been used solely when massive spikes in electrical energy use had been anticipated, resembling throughout a chilly snap in 2022 or the 2023 warmth wave.

Its final supply of 1,650 tonnes of coal initially of this summer time barely provided 500,000 properties for eight hours.

“It’s like the end of a era,” mentioned Becky, 25, serving £4 pints behind the bar of the Crimson Lion pub in close by Kegworth.

Her father works on the energy station and might be out of a job. September 30 is more likely to fire up robust feelings for him and the opposite 350 remaining workers.

“It’s their life,” she mentioned.

Nothing stays of the world’s first coal-fired energy station, which was constructed by Thomas Edison in central London in 1882, three years after his invention of the electrical gentle bulb.

The identical destiny is slated for Ratcliffe-on-Soar: the location’s German proprietor, Uniper, mentioned will probably be fully dismantled “by the end of the decade”.

As an alternative might be a brand new growth—a “carbon-free technology and energy hub”, the corporate mentioned.

© 2024 AFP