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UK: The last coal-power plant closes

Positive news: no more coal power in the United Kingdom.

SL Staff B

• 2 min read
A coal vendor, out of business.
No more coal-power plants in the UK. That's it!

On October 1, 2024, the UK closed the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire.1

Ratcliffe-on-Soar was the last operating coal-fired power plant in the country. It closed a year ahead of schedule.

The closure dropped the percentage of coal-fired power in the United Kingdom from 2% to ... zero percent.

Since coal power plants first began to operate in the UK in 1882, they have belched an estimated 10.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.4

The plant will be demolished over the next two years.

Plans for the refurbished site are still a bit aspirational. At one time, site owner Uniper Energy had proposed a giant waste incinerator2 at the location, but now a local development website says:3

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar site is leading the way in clean energy innovation and advanced manufacturing, transforming from a coal-fired power station into a zero-carbon manufacturing and technology hub. This redevelopment underscores the East Midlands’ commitment to decarbonisation and sustainable industrial growth.
Even if a clean energy innovation hub never happens on the site, the demolition of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant is a gigantic positive step.

It's a win.

About Hope

If you look at the top of this web page, you'll notice "HOPE", a menu item that takes you to a series of short articles about victories in the climate fight. This is one of those articles.

People don't have a lot of time. They are inundated with negative news about the environment. While these negative news stories can communicate the seriousness of the situation, they can also convince people to believe that things are hopeless ... and they are not. So each little, digestible bit provides a peek into one tiny little thing that has gone right.

Don't think for a minute, though, that any of these issues are simple. Usually, a whole world of physics, chemistry, policy, and actions undergirds each of these stories. We encourage you to look more deeply, to investigate the references at the end of each article, to take advantage of each little positive window into a bigger, more complex situation.

See below for some reading suggestions.

⚡️
  1. “STATEMENT: UK Eliminates Coal from Power Generation,” January 10, 2024. https://www.wri.org/news/statement-uk-eliminates-coal-power-generation.
  2. “Doubt over Future of UK’s Last Coal-Fired Power Station Site,” November 9, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxwzr11299o.
  3. “Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station Site - East Midlands Freeport,” November 19, 2024. https://www.emfreeport.com/site/racliffe-on-soar-power-station-site/.
  4. Goodman, Molly Lempriere, Simon Evans, Verner Viisainen, Joe. “Q&A: How the UK Became the First G7 Country to Phase out Coal Power.” Carbon Brief, September 27, 2024. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/coal-phaseout-UK/.

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