The station’s closure is a symbolic milestone in London’s ambition to completely remove coal from electricity generation by 2030
The last one coal power station of the UK is to officially close its doors today, ending the use of this fuel for production electricmaking it a member of the Group of Seven (G7) more developed industrialized nations for the first time.
The closure of the station, which opened in 1967, is a symbolic milestone in London’s ambition to completely remove the coal from electricity generation by 2030 and then to reach carbon neutrality in 2050.
The United Kingdom thus becoming the first G7 country to be exempt from this fuel. Italy has set a deadline to do so in 2025, France in 2027, Canada in 2030, Germany in 2038. Japan and the United States have not announced an exact date.
The shutdown “marks the end of an era” but also ushers in “a new century” of new energy jobs, promised in a statement from the British government, which launched a plan this summer for green actions.
The power station, which is located at Ratcliffe-on-Shore, between Derby and Nottingham, in the heart of England, is to be completely decommissioned “by the end of the decade”, according to German energy company Uniper, which is its owner, before a “carbon-free technology and energy pole” was created in the same spot.
Coal contributed greatly to the UK’s economic growth from the 19th century until the 1990s.
This highly polluting energy still produced in the 1980s almost 70% of the country’s electricity. Then this percentage dropped dramatically: 38% in 2013, 5% in 2018 and 1% last year.
To get rid of coal, the British replaced it with natural gas, a fossil fuel that appears to be less polluting and was used in 2023 to produce a third of electricity. A quarter is generated by wind power, a remarkable proportion. Nuclear energy accounts for about 13%.
“Coal’s place is now in the history books,” says Tony Bosworth of the non-governmental organization Friends of the Earth. “The priority now is to move away from gas by developing the UK’s huge potential in renewable energy as quickly as possible.”
“Britain has set an example that the rest of the world should follow”, emphasized Doug Parr of Greenpeace UK.
Source: Skai
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