The UK’s milestone offers hope, but the global energy transition will need more support for developing countries and attention to social impacts
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The UK has now closed its last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar in the East Midlands (Image: Paul Greenwood / Alamy)
The UK closed its last coal power plant on 30 September, ending the use of coal for electricity in the country that built the world’s first such power station in 1882.
It’s a milestone in the country’s efforts to slow climate change, and a stark difference from just a year ago, when then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a rollback of net-zero policies, drawing criticism from climate experts.
At last year’s UN climate conference in Dubai, governments agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels”. But examples of successful transitions are in short supply. Could the UK’s historic achievement inject fresh momentum into the global campaign to phase out coal for good?
Coal phase-out
To have a chance of limiting global heating to the safe limit of a 1.5C rise, coal-fired power generation must end by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.
Yet in 2023, power companies burned more coal than ever before and the total capacity of coal-fired power stations globally reached 2,130 gigawatts (GW), up 2% on the previous year and the highest growth since 2016, according to Global Energy Monitor.
