Britain’s last coal-fired power station is set to close at the end of this month.
The Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station sits in central Britain’s East Midlands area. It has been producing electricity for nearly 60 years.
The planned closure will end pollution-linked coal burning for electricity production in Britain. It also marks the first time a member of the Group of Seven (G7) leading world economies has completely ended coal-fired energy production.
The power center operates in the town of Ratcliffe-on-Soar. It has long been one of the area’s biggest landmarks.
David Reynolds is a 74-year-old retiree. He remembers seeing the station being built as a child before it opened in 1967. He told the French news agency, AFP, "It'll seem very strange because it has always been there." He added, "When I was younger you could go down certain parts and you saw nothing but coal pits."
Coal-fueled power production has been an important part of Britain’s economic history. It helped drive an Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. This helped make the country a world superpower. But the coal-fired centers also led to increased pollution problems across the nation.
In the 1980s, coal burning represented 70 percent of the country’s electricity production mix. That level began to decrease in the 1990s. By 2013, coal burning made up 38 percent of the country’s electricity production. The rate fell to five percent in 2018 and dropped to one percent in 2023.
Britain’s Conservative-led government announced in 2015 it planned to close all coal-fired power stations by 2025 in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. Many scientists have linked carbon emissions to planet warming and other climate changes linked to human-related causes.
As of last year, natural gas represented one-third of Britain’s electricity production, power operator National Grid ESO reported. The organization also found that a quarter of electricity production came from wind power, while 13 percent was nuclear.
Jess Ralston heads a British policy center called the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. He told AFP that the country’s strong push to end coal-fired plants was linked to government requirements as well as a changing economic environment.
"So larger power plants like coal plants had regulations put on them…and that meant that it was no longer economically attractive to invest in those sorts of plants."
Britain’s new Labour government launched its latest energy plan after its election win in July. The plan calls for investing in offshore wind, tidal energy and nuclear power. The government has said the aim is to make Britain a world leader in "clean energy."
The planned closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar on September 30 is seen as an important step in Britain’s efforts to decarbonize its electricity system by 2030. The country also plans to become carbon neutral by 2050.
The move makes Britain the first in the G7 to halt all coal powered electricity production. Italy plans to do so by next year, France in 2027, Canada in 2030 and Germany in 2038. Japan and the United States have set no dates for stopping production.
I’m Bryan Lynn.
