The country’s final coal-fired power station was desynced from the grid on 30 September, bringing an end to 142 years of burning coal for electricity.
On 30 September the UK became the first G7 country to abandon coal power.
The final coal-powered plant in Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire was ‘desynced’ from the grid system at 3 pm bringing the UK’s 142-year history of burning coal for electricity to an end.
Energy minister Michael Shanks said Ratcliffe’s closure was the “end of an era”, adding that coal workers can be “rightly proud” of powering the country for more than 140 years.
“As we close this chapter, we honor Ratcliffe’s legacy and the people working here, while embracing the future of cleaner and flexible energy,” Michael Lewis, CEO of Uniper the company which owns the plant, said in a statement.
The UK has seen a rapid decline in coal energy over the last 12 years with an increasing number of coal-free electricity days since its first in 2017. Even following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent spike in gas prices, this trend did not reverse.
“This is the final chapter of a remarkably swift transition from the country that started the Industrial Revolution,” says Phil MacDonald, managing director of energy think tank Ember.
So how did this “remarkably swift” downfall of what was once a major power source happen?
How did the UK reach zero coal power?
The world’s first coal power plant, the Holborn Viaduct plant, opened in London in 1882. From there, it grew to dominate the country’s energy landscape, accounting for 39 per cent of electricity generation as recently as 2012.
But there has been a rapid decline in coal-generated energy in the UK over the last 12 years. It has remained at 2 per cent or lower of the energy mix since 2019. A combination of financial incentives and policy decisions saw 25 coal plants close or switch to other energy sources since 2000 – 15 of those closures have happened since 2021.
A new report from Ember has outlined five key policy lessons that facilitated the UK’s rapid exit from coal. It tightened decarbonisation targets, becoming the first country to set a 2025 date for the phase-out of coal power.
The UK also raised the cost of coal through carbon pricing and further emissions requirements for new power stations.
On top of that, there was support for offshore wind as it was identified as one of the UK’s leading industries. Market reforms for renewables provided security for developers and investment in the electricity grid allowed new clean energy generation to be rapidly connected.
“The UK provided both the carrots and the sticks,” MacDonald explains. “It’s important to signal that polluting sources have an end date, but also to provide an enabling environment to build the new clean energy system.”
Since the rapid decline in coal power began, the UK has quadrupled its wind and solar power generation. Coal generation fell from 39 per cent in 2012 to 1 per cent in 2023 while the share of wind and solar in the electricity grid grew from 6 per cent to 34 per cent.
Replacing coal with wind and solar has drastically cut emissions
Replacing coal power with wind and solar has also had a major impact on the UK’s power sector emissions, according to Ember. They fell by three-quarters from 158 megatonnes of CO2 equivalents in 2012 to 41 megatonnes of CO2 equivalents in 2023.
This means the UK has avoided 880 million tonnes of emissions since 2021 – the equivalent of more than double the country’s total economy-wide emissions in 2023.
Experts say there is still work to be done, however, on cutting expensive imported gas and some of the lessons from the coal phase-out can be applied to this final stage of decarbonising the power sector.
“The UK has achieved something massive, shifting its power system from a huge polluter to one where renewables are thriving, in an astonishingly short period of time,” says Ember senior energy and climate analyst Frankie Mayo.
“But the work to build a clean power system will continue – to cut the need for expensive imported gas, to lower energy bills and to generate the clean electricity which will enable the rest of the economy to transition too.”
Which countries have phased out coal?
The UK’s rapid shift away from coal is also part of a wider global trend as countries seek to decarbonise their energy systems.
The use of coal among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) peaked in 2007 and then reached half of that peak for the first time last year. The rapid growth of wind and solar power is responsible for 87 per cent of the fall in coal power in these countries during this time period, Ember says.
With the addition of the UK, more than a third of the 38 OECD countries have now phased out coal power.
Three never had coal power plants – Costa Rica, Estonia and Lithuania.
A further 11 once used coal but have since closed their last plant: Iceland in 1951, Switzerland in 1960, Luxembourg in 1998, Latvia in 2010, Belgium in 2016, Sweden and Austria in 2020, Portugal in 2021, Norway in 2023, and Slovakia in 2024. Each of these countries had more wind and solar generation in 2023 than they had coal generation at its peak.
Three–quarters of OECD members are also expected to eliminate coal power by 2030, aligning with international targets to limit global warming to 1.5C.
