Good News! England Shutters its Last Coal Powered Power Plant
On September 30, 2024, Britain shut down its last remaining coal-fired power plant – the Ratcliffe-on-Soar station. This made Britain – the first country to ever open a coal-fired plant (the Thomas Edison’s Edison Electric Light Station which opened 142 years ago in 1982) – the first Group of Seven nation to eliminate coal as a source of electricity. The Group of Seven also includes the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Earlier this year they announced a joint commitment to phase out all coal plants by 2035 – although there are apparently some loopholes that will enable some countries to extent that time frame.
Britain is not the first country to phase out coal; several countries, including Sweden and Belgium, had already done that. But Britain was clearly a much larger consumer of coal. In 1990 coal was still responsible for over 80% of electricity production in Britain. That was down to under 40% in 2012 - and just 1% in 2023.
By contrast, in the US coal was responsible for more than 50% of electricity production in 2000 and that dropped to about 16% in 2023 – below the amount generated by renewable energy. The last coal plant opened in the US in 2013. The plant that just closed in the UK was the last one built there – opening in 1967. A total of 22 coal plants have shut down in the US over the past 20 years, but 32 are still in operation, with some plans in place to begin to phase them out.
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And, on the other extreme, the percentage of electricity generated from coal in China dropped under 60% - barely – for the first time in the first half of 2024. China was responsible for 95% of the world’s coal power construction in 2023. And China permitted enough coal plants in 2022 to result in 2 new coal power plants per month. (China is also building more wind and solar plants than any other country).
The Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant covers 655 acres. It has four coal-fired boilers, eight huge cooling towers, and a 650-foot-tall chimney. It was able to provide power for close to 2 million homes.
So goodbye Ratcliffe-on Soar.
And good riddance!