“The end of an era”: the United Kingdom closes its last coal-fired power station – 09/30/2024 at 04:18

The UK’s last coal-fired power station is due to officially close on Monday, ending the use of the fuel in its electricity generation, a first for a G7 member.

The closure of the establishment, inaugurated in 1967, is a symbolic step in London’s ambition to completely decarbonize its electricity by 2030, then to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050.

The United Kingdom thus becomes the first G7 country to go without fuel: Italy has set itself 2025, France 2027, Canada 2030, Germany 2038. Japan and the United States have not of precise date.

This closure “marks the end of an era” but also opens “a new age” which will promote the creation of new jobs in the energy sector, promises in a press release the British government, which launched a plan this summer on green energies.

The power station, located in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, between Derby and Nottingham, in the heart of England, must be completely dismantled “by the end of the decade”, according to the German energy company Uniper, its owner, before the creation of a “carbon-free technology and energy hub” on site.

Coal contributed significantly to the economic growth of the United Kingdom from the 19th century until the 1990s.

This extremely polluting energy still represented nearly 70% of its electricity in the 1980s. Before a spectacular drop: 38% in 2013, 5% in 2018 and 1% last year.

To get rid of it, the British compensated with natural gas, a fossil energy presented as less polluting and which will be used in 2023 to produce a third of electricity. A quarter goes to wind power, a notable proportion. Nuclear is at around 13%.

– “In the history books” –

This change can be explained in particular by a proactive policy, with strict regulations from the 1990s due to pollution and by the end of the manufacturing economy, which reduced the importance of coal.

“The place (of coal) is now in the history books,” says Tony Bosworth, of the NGO Friends of the Earth. “The priority now is to move away from gas by developing the UK’s huge renewable energy potential as quickly as possible.”

“Britain has set an example that the rest of the world must follow,” said Doug Parr of Greenpeace UK.

As part of its green energy plan, London intends in particular to create a public company, Great British Energy, based in Aberdeen, in the east of Scotland, to invest in floating wind turbines, tidal energy or nuclear power. .

In this same vein, the British government recently nationalized for 630 million pounds (746 million euros) the British electricity network operator ESO, responsible for regulating the balance between supply and demand for electricity, in order to to connect more effectively “new sustainable production projects”.

The eight gray chimneys at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which employs 350 people, only smoked intermittently, particularly in cases of hot or cold spells.

Capable of supplying electricity to two million homes, the plant received at the beginning of the summer a final shipment of coal, 1,650 tonnes, enough to power 500,000 homes for eight hours.

The world’s first coal-fired power station, created by Thomas Edison, opened in the heart of London in 1882.