'End of an era': UK closes last coal-fired power station

The UK's last coal-fired power station officially closes on Monday, ending the use of this fuel in its electricity production, a first for a G7 member.

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

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

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

The plant, 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 on site of a “carbon-free technology and energy hub”.

– “The rest of the world must follow” –

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 decline: 38% in 2013, 5% in 2018 and 1% per year past.

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

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

“(Coal's) place is now in the history books,” rejoices Tony Bosworth, of the NGO Friends of the Earth. “The priority now is to move away from gas by developing as quickly as possible the enormous potential of the United Kingdom in terms of renewable energies.”

“Great Britain has set an example that the rest of the world must follow,” underlines Doug Parr, for his part, of Greenpeace UK.

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

– Thomas Edison –

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

The eight grey chimneys of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which employs 350 people, only smoked intermittently, particularly during heat waves or blackouts. cold.

Capable of supplying electricity to two million homes, the plant received a final shipment of coal at the beginning of the summer, 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.

The closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar took place on the same day as that of Tata Steel's last blast furnace in the United Kingdom, in Port Talbot (Wales), the country's largest steelworks, another symbol of British deindustrialization.

The Indian giant is ending iron production on the site, but intends to resume steel production there, with the installation by 2027/2028 of an electric arc furnace, less polluting than coal-hungry blast furnaces, and which requires less labor.

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