Britain’s last coal-fired power station closes

The end of an era

On September 30th water vapour will rise from the eight giant cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire for the final time. The closure of Britain’s last coal-fired power plant is the end, in effect, of an industry that has played a critical role in shaping the country’s economy over three centuries. It is also testament to a remarkably successful drive to stamp down on the dirtiest source of carbon emissions.

A worker inspects the offline turbine hall of Ratcliffe on Soar Coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire central England on October 1, 2024. The UK�s last coal-fired power station shut down on September 30 after 60 years of looming over the small town of the same name, the closure signalled the end to polluting coal-powered electricity in the UK, in a landmark first for any G7 nation. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)(AFP)

Coal powered the Industrial Revolution. The world’s first coal-fired power station began operating in London in 1882. When Britain first built out an electricity grid in the 1920s, it was the burning of coal that lit people’s homes. As demand for electricity grew, many coal-fired plants, including the one in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, were built in the country’s mining heartlands in the 1960s and 1970s.

Britain’s ability to shift away from coal was partly due to luck. The discovery of abundant gas in the North Sea, and the subsequent “dash for gas” in the 1980s and 1990s, reduced its dependence on coal. But the rapid shift away from the fuel in recent decades—a much more dramatic change than in other G7 countries (see chart 1)—has been the result of deliberate policies designed to boost renewables, particularly offshore wind, and to phase out coal-fired power generation. Over the past five years Britain has passed weeks, and even months, without needing to burn any coal for electricity (see chart 2). Now it will be for good.