The Last Coal-Fired Generating Station In The UK Went Offline This Week

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For 142 years, the UK relied on coal to power its generating stations. In January, 1882, the world’s first coal-fired power station began operating at Holborn Viaduct in London. It was built by the Edison Electric Light Station, and the generator, known as Jumbo, supplied electricity for lighting to the viaduct and surrounding businesses until 1886. Thomas Edison himself hailed the Holburn generating station as a success. From 1882 until his week, coal-fired generating plants in the UK will have consumed 4.6 billion tons of coal and emitted 10.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is more than most countries have ever produced from all sources, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief.

Dr Ewan Gibbs, senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, told Carbon Brief recently, “The way the UK’s Industrial Revolution unfolded, coal was absolutely pivotal to becoming the industrial economy that Britain developed in the 19th century. The steel industry was powered by coal. And over the late 18th — and certainly in the first half of the 19th century — Britain became…the world’s first coal fired economy.” Now the UK has become the first G7 nation to end the use of coal to generate electricity.

Writing in the Washington Post, William Booth says, “If you are looking for a signal event, a real ping, to mark humanity’s journey to slow global climate change, this is a thing. On [September 29], the very last coal powered electricity plant in Britain is closing. The coal age is over in the country that sparked the industrial revolution 200 years ago. In a matter of hours, the four 500-megawatt turbines will cease their once ceaseless spinning. And the remnants of a once towering mountain of coal that powered the plant for 57 years will be a layer of dust ready to be swept away.” A bit melodramatic, perhaps, but accurate nonetheless.

The plant will be decommissioned over the next two years and then demolished. The brownfield left behind will be turned into something else, possibly a “zero-carbon technology and energy hub.” Those plans are still being hammered out. That Britain would give up coal would have been unimaginable to previous generations, and to previous governments and captains of industries, which poured vast sums of capital and labor into the enterprise. This was a country powered by coal — dug by a million miners, used to make cheap energy, to generate heat, then steam, then electricity. Coal heated the homes, ran the trains, and made the steel and cement, Booth said.

The Downward Slide For Coal In The UK

Coal remained the primary source of electricity in the UK until several factors combined to disrupt its dominance. In the 1960s, methane gas from beneath the North Sea started to become available. Over time, it became cheaper to burn methane than coal. But there were political triggers as well that sealed the fate of coal power in the UK. In October 2008, the UK passed the Climate Change Act, including a legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 60% below 1990 levels by 2050. That was later strengthened to 80%, and then in 2019 to “net-zero.” Sean Rai-Roche, policy advisor at E3G, tells Carbon Brief that the Act, as the first legally binding climate goal set by a country, was a “seminal moment” in the UK’s journey toward a coal phaseout.

By 2009, Ed Miliband, the energy and climate secretary, announced that no new coal plants would be built in the UK without CCS. “The era of new unabated coal has come to an end,” Miliband stated at the time. He is now secretary of state for energy security in the new Labour government. Yet the prior Labour government continued to back new coal with CCS, describing it as part of a “trinity” of low carbon electricity sources along with new nuclear and renewables. Near the end of 2009, climate protesters forced energy developer E.On to postpone its Kingsnorth coal generating plans. The Kingsnorth plant was formally cancelled the following year and no new coal projects were ever built again in the UK, paving the way for an early phase-out as old plants retired.

After 2010, with no new coal plants built in the UK and with many older sites set to close rather than making costly upgrades to meet tighter air pollution rules, coal power was primed for the second stage of its phase-out. The 2013 Energy Act formalized the end of unabated coal power with an emissions performance standard (EPS). This set a limit of 450g of CO2 per kilowatt hour for new power plants — around half the emissions of unabated coal.

Dr Simon Cran-McGreehin, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, told Carbon Brief the combination of air pollution rules, the cost of CCS, and carbon pricing made ongoing coal generation “uncompetitive.” He said, “Ongoing coal power simply isn’t an option, as it would have such high costs…that it would be uncompetitive with even gas and nuclear, let alone new renewables.”

The 2013 Energy Act also revived plans for new nuclear, leading to the construction of the highly controversial Hinkley Point C in Somerset. The coalition government also introduced the “carbon price floor” in 2013, which added an extra cost for carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector and tipped the scales in favor of gas over coal. This additional carbon price had a “significant effect” on UK coal power, according to Ember, helping drive a sharp reduction in generation over the years that followed.

Change Happens Fast

The UK’s electricity system today looks dramatically different today than it did just a few decades ago, with renewables increasingly dominating the generation mix. Renewable generation doubled in the space of five years, from around 50 TWh in 2013 to 110 TWh in 2018. Renewables are on track to generate more than 150 TWh in 2024. In 2023, renewables set a new record by providing 44% of the country’s electricity supplies, up from 31% in 2018 and just 7% in 2010. While oil, nuclear, and methane have each played important roles in squeezing out coal in the power sector, renewables are now doing the heavy lifting as the UK’s aging fleet of nuclear reactors reaches the end of its life, and the use of renewables expands. Carbon Brief expects they will be responsible for more than half of all electricity generation in the UK in 2024.

“Crucially, coal hasn’t been replaced by other fossil fuels, gas generation fell from 46 percent in 2010 to 32 percent in 2023. Carbon Brief expects methane will fall to around 22 percent of the electricity supply in 2024. So, on a gigawatt basis, we’ve replaced the ‘firm’ coal capacity with gas, but on a gigawatt hour basis — which is what matters to emissions — we stopped using as much [of either] coal or gas because of the renewables on the system,” said E3G’s Rae-Roche. In particular, wind generation now vies with gas month-to-month as to the biggest source of electricity in the UK. In the first quarter of 2024, wind contributed more electricity than gas generation for the second quarter in a row.

Full Decarbonization

After becoming the first major economy to phase out coal generation, the UK is looking to go one step further by fully decarbonizing its power supplies by 2030. Under the previous Conservative government, the UK was targeting a zero carbon power sector by 2035, but the newly elected Labour government has brought this forward to 2030. At the same time, the power sector will need to start expanding in order to meet demand from sectors such as transport and heating, as they are increasingly electrified.

Electricity demand in the UK is expected to increase by 50% by 2035, according to the Climate Change Committee. Meeting this growth at the same time as phasing out unabated gas will require a very large increase in renewable generating capacity, as well as supporting systems to ensure the grid can run securely on predominantly variable generation from wind and solar. In order to meet its 2030 target and wider UK climate goals, the Labour government has pledged to double onshore wind capacity, triple solar, and quadruple offshore wind. The government is also backing new nuclear projects, CCS, and a “strategic reserve of gas power stations” to guarantee security of electricity supplies. Since taking office, the Labour government has asked the Electricity System Operator to provide “practical advice” on how to reach the “clean power by 2030” target.

The End Of Coal Is Symbolic

There is an obvious symbolism about the UK — home to the world’s first-ever coal-fired power station in 1882 — becoming the first major economy to phase out coal power. Because of its status as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and as the world’s first “coal powered economy,” the phase-out of coal in the UK is being viewed internationally as an “inspiring example of ambition,” says COP 29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev.

Beyond such symbolism, the UK’s coal phase-out also matters in substantive terms, because it shows that a rapid transition away from coal power is possible. Coal’s share of UK electricity generation halved between 1990 and 2000, then dropped from two-fifths of supplies in 2012 to zero by the end of 2024. The message is that if the UK can do it, so can other industrialized nations.