Britain shut down its last coal-fired power station at midnight

At midnight, Britain closed its last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar.

This makes the country the first G7 country to become independent of environmentally harmful coal, writes NTB.

The decommissioning of the coal-fired power plant will take around two years, and according to the owner Uniper, the 170 remaining employees will help.

The power plant has been supplying electricity for more than half a century.

The British government hails the closure of the power station as a milestone in its efforts to generate all of the UK’s energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Britain’s Energy Secretary Michael Shanks says the closure marks the end of an era and that coal workers can be proud of the work they have done for over 140 years.

“We as a nation owe generations of Britons a huge thank you.”

“The era of coal may be over, but a new era of good jobs in the energy sector is just beginning,” he said, according to NTB.

The world’s first coal-fired power station opened in London in 1882. It became the catalyst of the industrial revolution.

Today, more than half of Britain’s electricity comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy. The rest comes from natural gas and nuclear power.

In the past, however, things looked significantly different.

In the 1990s, around 80% of Britain’s electricity was generated from coal. According to the British electricity and gas company National Grid, this figure fell to 39% by 2012 and to just 1% by 2023.

“Ten years ago, coal was the leading source of electricity in this country, generating a third of our electricity.”

“To come here after just a decade of replacing coal with clean, low-carbon energy sources is an incredible achievement,” says Dhara Vyas, deputy CEO of Energy UK.

(English adaptation by Katrine Gøthler)