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United Kingdom

UK Ends 142-Year Coal Power Era in Industry's Birthplace (bbc.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
AmiMoJo writes: The UK is about to stop producing any electricity from burning coal -- ending its 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel. The country's last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, finishes operations on Monday after running since 1967. This marks a major milestone in the country's ambitions to reduce its contribution to climate change. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel producing the most greenhouse gases when burnt.

The UK was the birthplace of coal power, and from tomorrow it becomes the first major economy to give it up. The first coal-fired power station in the world, the Holborn Viaduct power station, was built in 1882 in London by the inventor Thomas Edison -- bringing light to the streets of the capital. In the early 1990s, coal began to be forced out of the electricity mix by gas, but coal still remained a crucial component of the UK grid for the next two decades. In 2012, it still generated 39% of the UK's power.

In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK's power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50% -- a new record. The rapid growth of green power meant that coal could even be switched off completely for short periods, with the first coal-free days in 2017.
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UK Ends 142-Year Coal Power Era in Industry's Birthplace More

UK Ends 142-Year Coal Power Era in Industry's Birthplace

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  • Sigh. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    Only at least 42 years too late.

    And still the majority of UK electricity is generated by CCGT (as a hint, the last two stand for "gas turbine").

    Another 42 years before we get rid of that too?

    • Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @12:04PM (#64828693) Homepage
      The UK's electricity sourced from CCGT is actually down to somewhere around 40% and usage is currently trending downwards, although at the current rate of decline we're still looking at around two decades before it is also phased out. Most of the UK's electricity now comes from renewables of one kind or another, but that does include nuclear and YMMV on just how "renewable" that is given Sellafield hasn't been doing any reprocessing for quite a while now. There's still a lot of work to be done, certainly, and we'll have to see how committed Labour is to the green agenda in this October's budget to get a feel for how that might go over the next few decades, but better late than never and this is still a big milestone that's been achieved.

      • Forget the arguments about whether nuclear is "renewable," let's not forget that the UK is shipping trees from North America and burning them in a former coal power station.... and somehow THAT counts as renewable too. Yep, in the UK, cutting down forests, then putting them on an oil burning ship, driving them across the Atlantic, then burning them, counts as "renewable." : https://www.bbc.com/news/scien... [bbc.com]

        Some background info on the Drax Power Station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Greenwashing at its f

        • B.S. (Score:2)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          >> Greenwashing at its finest. "Biomass" makes it sound so make more soft and cuddly doesn't it.
          Nope, it is not.
          Burning trees is much better from the greenhouse gas point of view than coal.
          Also, the "Biomass" category today is mostly methane from fermented compost, an even better greenhouse gas use, because CO2 is much less of a problem than methane from rotting compost.

          • Did you read the links? It's not all new timber from plantations, some of it is old growth forest. And it's not even carbon-neutral if they have to put all the timber on freighters and burn fuel oil to ship them across the Atlantic.

            I'm not saying all biomass power is "bad," it's certainly a better idea to burn methane for energy than you just vent it into the atmosphere as-is. But that's not what Drax is doing.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by stooo ( 2202012 )

              Valid arguments, but it is much much much better to burn trees 10% of the time than burning coal 80% of the time...
              It will phase out over time once storage solutions can scale.

              • Valid arguments, but it is much much much better to burn trees 10% of the time than burning coal 80% of the time...
                It will phase out over time once storage solutions can scale.

                But is that what's happening? As far as I can tell, the power output of Drax is about the same as it was when they were burning coal, but now they are burning those North American trees. Not agricultural waste, and not trees from somewhere closer, like the Scandinavian countries that already have an efficient timber industry.

                Look, I don't believe there's a "silver bullet" technology to fix climate change, I am all for a sensible transition, and I fully accept that a lot of this transition will merely be "le

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by stooo ( 2202012 )

                  >> But is that what's happening? As far as I can tell, the power output of Drax
                  What is the load factor over a year ? (or the GWh produced over a year)
                  it probably sunk quite a lot, and probably works more as a peaker plant for filling missing renewables, before more of a baseload operation.
                  Also, compared to UK's previous ~150TWh of coal, Drax today is probably quite low.
                  But, yes, it's a transition technology, gap filling as long as we don't have large scale long term storage.

    • If there weren't so many anti-nuclear environmentalists they could have almost entirely gotten rid of both decades ago as France did. I don't live there, so it's no skin off my back if the UK makes its grid less reliable or massively increases rates so they can switch to wind, but if I did live there I'd probably suggest not doing that.

      • Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @12:30PM (#64828769) Homepage Journal

        The new Hinckley Point C station is due to open around 2030, 20 years after work on it started.

        It will produce 3.2GW from two reactors.

        For comparison, China installed 609GW of renewables in 2023, and nearly 30GWh of battery storage. In 1/20th of the time and doubtless a fraction of the cost per unit of energy.

        I'm sure there's some excuse why we can't, but given they are installing renewable capacity 4000x faster than Hinckley is, even accounting for capacity factor and storage and anything else you can think of...

        Oh and for reference demand at the moment in the UK is 37GW.

        • Re: Sigh. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by blastard ( 816262 )

          You honestly don't know why the cost is less in China? Safety rules and the fact that they won't be meaningfully held to account if a major disaster happens accounts for much of the difference. Profit motives and excessive red tape is another. (Noting the word excessive, hard to define)

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            No, it's because renewables are just cheaper than nuclear everywhere in the world, including China.

            If you are right then Chinese nuclear isn't burdened by all the safety requirements and regulations that the West has, and it's still more expensive.

            • > No, it's because renewables are just cheaper than nuclear everywhere in the world, including China

              Thats a myth. They are cheaper to operate and install, not cheaper for the consumer.

              They get put up so quickly as the operators make a shit tonne of cash off the public that here in the UK pay through the nose for the premium electricity the wind turbines and panels produce.

              Wind wont ever be cheaper as the world already decdied that leccy users are cgarged based on the price of gas, and if the UK were to

          • What "major disaster" would you expect from a wide deployment of renewable energy?

            Are the panels going to randomly catch fire? Are the wind turbines going to become detached from the tower and fly off like a propeller aircraft engine into an inconvenient nearby crowd of thousands of people?

            What the hell are you even talking about?

            • > What "major disaster" would you expect from a wide deployment of renewable energy?

              What? Like that Elon Musk battery facility in Australia that went up in smoke spewing deadly chemicals out into the environment with no way to stop the fire other than to just "let it burn"?

              • As opposed to the coal power which spews deadly chemicals out into the environment as a byproduct of normal operation...

                I think I'd rather have one day of battery fire than 365 days * number of years of operation of coal fire.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The question is, are safety rules so lax in China that it's 4000x cheaper and quicker, or is that just the nature of renewable energy vs nuclear?

            We aren't seeing widespread mass failures of renewable energy systems in China. They would be visible on satellite photos, although we could just look on social media to see the videos. Like the ones of rockets exploding and buildings collapsing.

            Hinkley Point C was actually pretty low on red tape. As the name suggests, the site already has two other nuclear power s

            • Hinkley Point C was actually pretty low on red tape.

              You say that but it's 2.5x the cost of France power and 5x the cost of South Korea.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                It's comparable to other EDF projects in Europe.

                It used to be cheaper because we hadn't discovered all the expensive problems that needed to be addressed.

            • > Hinkley Point C was actually pretty low on red tape

              Thats BS.

              Have you seen the construction videos? The walls are man made rebar, MAN MADE REBAR, made on site. Every single weld, EVERY WELD must be independantly checked in every wall and signed off. If the rebar has just one weld that is an issue, the wntire wall is scrapped, the issue reviewed and eventually started again.

              Building a nuclear plant is so full of red tape that they could barely build the staff toilets without it taking a few months, th

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                I mean in terms of getting sign off to start the project, not in terms of standard nuclear safety stuff.

                It's funny that people think SMRs will somehow be able to avoid all these requirements.

          • The safety rules are the same as every where on the planet.
            Unlike you toy republic: people in China get executed for breaking rules like yours.
            IDIOT!

          • Nuclear electricity is 4x more expensive in china than renewables, but it does not matter, as the objective is to get Plutonium.
            Electricity is just a byproduct.

        • They arenâ(TM)t producing 600GW from renewables, effectively those plants produce less than 100GW, hence why they also installed 200GW of nuclear and about the same in just coal, they actually went from 70% of fossil fuel in their energy mix to 83%.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by stooo ( 2202012 )

            This is B.S....
            Fossil electricity is down, and will continue to go down, because economics.
            Nuclear is at a measly 4.7%
            Renewables is over 30%.

            https://ember-climate.org/coun... [ember-climate.org]
            In 2023, clean power made up 35% of China’s electricity mix, with hydro the largest single source of clean power at 13%. Wind and solar hit a new record share of 16%, above the global average (13%). China generated 37% of global wind and solar electricity in 2023, enough to power Japan.
            Yet, China relied on fossil fuels for 65% of

        • > In 1/20th of the time and doubtless a fraction of the cost per unit of energy.

          Thats because they have several things:

          1. They have millions of poor people wanting to do any work.
          2. They can make them work. For low pay.
          3. They dont care about pandering to all the H&S red tape and can simply "get shit done".
          4. Did I mention they can simply get shit done because they dont give a shit about making sure that a nail has a H&S risk assesment and that anything they build can just be built.

          Also the work

      • This. By raw death count, Greenpeace is more evil than nazis, commies, christianity and islam taken together. Electricity generation from coal kills a Hitler worth of people every less than 3 years with short-term air pollution alone (ie, ignoring global warming etc).

        We already had Germany having a healthy base of non-polluting power generation. Instead, they switched to lignite, which is the dirtiest kind of coal.

      • > massively increases rates so they can switch to wind, but if I did live there I'd probably suggest not doing that

        If you lived here you'll now it was already too late for that. Rates have just gone up ready for winter. Oh and if you are old and claim a pension, you are on your own, no winter fuel payments anymore.

    • Everyone is cheering now, hooray! But when Margaret Thatcher did it she was vilified. Waiting for someone, anyone, to admit their error.

      Arthur Scargill must be remembered as the climate destroyer he was.

    • Incremental improvements are still improvements.

      Why must everyone always make "better" to be the mortal enemy of "perfect" ?

      You can have this, or you can have the coal. I prefer this.

    • The majority isnâ(TM)t generated from gas, but the largest single minority is. The UKâ(TM)s grid make up is roughly:

      - 40% gas
      - 15% nuclear
      - 10% biomass
      - 35% wind, solar and hydro

  • RIP Brass Birmingham (Score:3)

    by Kwirl ( 877607 ) <kwirlkarphys@gmail.com> on Monday September 30, 2024 @12:11PM (#64828711)
    had a good run as the #1 game

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The coal plants could live on though, by being converted to flywheels. They have done that in Ireland to help with grid stability where they have so much wind power.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      The century of the Industrial Revolution covered by Brass: Birmingham ends about a decade before the Holborn Viaduct power station mentioned in TFS. In Brass coal is used more directly to smelt iron or to drive steam engines for industrial purposes.

  • I mean for the world. Kudos to UK for getting it done relatively soon compared to most.

    • I mean for the world. Kudos to UK for getting it done relatively soon compared to most.

      Easy, buddy. You're going off-message. There are no more good days ahead. We must have full buy-in in the belief that it's too late, lest other countries get pesky ideas that may impact short-term profit potential.

  • I'm pretty sure coal as an energy source was used a bit further back. Like by the Romans, Chinese, etc. Britain simply pioneered the use of coal to make things go around and around. And since the end use of that rotational energy is increasingly for heat (resistance heating, cooking, etc.) might as well get rid of the middle man and throw a few lumps in the stove, Mr Cratchit.

    • Unfortunately, as much as cutting out the middle man is often a great idea, here, it really hurts you. Open fires rarely manage more than about 5% efficiency for heating - most of the heat goes straight up the chimney. Stoves might get that too 10% if youâ(TM)re lucky. Meanwhile, power plant turbines can extract 60% of the energy. Even accounting for grid losses youâ(TM)re still going to get 5 times as much heat out of your coal via electric heating.

  • Worth a mention is the legendary Fred Dibnah probably the last steeplejack of his kind, and perhaps the best documented fellow doing such works as repair and teardown of coal-fired power plant chimneys. On the topic of coal power in its final days you may find it interesting and educational to seek out videos produced with Fred.

    Obligatory Wikipedia reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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