Someone is in Central England. Traveling to Ratcliffe – on – Soar in the Midlands you couldn’t help but notice, even if you wanted to, the 8 199 meter tall concrete ‘stacks’ of the coal fired power plant. Since 1968 they had prevailed on the horizon of the region, ‘burdening’ the landscape with the imprint of the development of the industrial revolution, but offering, indisputably, thousands of jobs for the inhabitants of those remote areas.

An old commitment

After nearly six decades, the facility is closing, with the last lights going out at midnight today, the last day of September. The history turns out to be long not only for the region, but for the whole of the United Kingdom which is considered the “home of coal mining” but also of coal-fired power plants. It is also characteristic that the first coal-fired power plant in the world was opened in 1882, in London, under the name Holborn Viaduct power station, of the Thomas Edison Electric Station company.

142 years later history must keep up with today’s necessity. After all, the British government since 2015 had pledged to close all coal-burning plants within the next decade, a goal that was finally achieved, always with an eye on a broader plan for its climate goals.

The end but also the future of the factory

Specifically, it is the coal-fired power plant of the German company Uniper. It once employed 3,000 employees, with several of them being gradually absorbed into other jobs, following a commitment by the company to retrain them.

Today, the plant’s remaining 170 employees and according to Uniper CEO Mike Lewis, will stay on to help with the plant’s cleanup process, which is expected to take two years. At the same time, he promised to operate the facility in a technological park, giving hope for new jobs in the area.

It should be mentioned that the staff was initially informed that the factory would close at the end of 2022. But its operation was extended after an agreement the company had with the British government, since it was considered necessary after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the European crisis that caused to energy.

The next “coal-free” day

Today’s statements about the closure of the factory are encouraging. Undersecretary for Energy Michael Shanks said that “the age of coal may be ending, but a new era for green energy jobs is beginning.” At the same time, as Julia Skorubska, a member of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a group of about 60 countries trying to end coal production, told Reuters, “the United Kingdom has shown that it is possible to phase out coal power with unprecedented speed.”

Britain is indeed the first country of the seven most developed economies, also known as the G7, to succeed in delinking from coal for energy production. In April, the G7 had agreed to abolish coal energy within the next decade, showing some flexibility in the countries that strongly depend on it, of course bringing various reactions mainly from environmental organizations. It is characteristic and according to the data, that Germany still bases its energy on coal at a higher rate of 25%, while Japan around 30%.

Step by step reduction

For Britain, in 1990 coal-fired electricity accounted for 80%. This percentage managed to decrease to 39% in 2012 and ten years later, in 2023, it reached just 1%, according to the data of the British energy company, National Grid.

Now, more than half of the energy produced for Britain’s needs comes from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, while the rest is based on natural gas and nuclear power. As the country aims to reach zero emissions by 2050, rapid change and development of renewable energy sources is required.