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The UK just became 100% coal-free — here’s how they did it

6 Oct 2024

After 142 years, the birthplace of coal became 100% coal-free on 1 October, when the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power plant in Nottinghamshire, UK, closed at midnight on Monday.

This week, the UK became the first country in the G7 to become coal-free.

In just 12 years the UK went from having coal power providing almost 40% of the UK’s power generation in 2012, to 0% today, most of which was largely replaced by wind, showing that a just energy transition is possible.

Wind replaced coal

While gas still makes up a significant portion of the UK’s energy mix, most of the energy lost from coal was replaced with wind.

EMBER reported that as coal generation fell, the share of gas grew only from 28% to 34%. Wind and solar generation increased from 6% to 34% of UK generation in the same period, which – along with declining electricity demand – filled the gap.

The biggest increase was wind, which grew 315% (62 terawatt hours) from 2012 to 2023. Wind and solar grew by 75TWh during that period, displacing 28 million tonnes of coal and avoiding an estimated £2.9-billion in costs based on 2023 coal prices.

“Now the UK gets a huge amount of its power from wind, increasing amounts from solar, some from nuclear, and obviously a big chunk from gas, and that’s the next challenge for the UK,” said Sean Rai-Roche, a policy adviser in the UK, working on E3G’s (an independent climate change think tank) Coal to Clean programme.

“Gas is extremely volatile. It’s fluctuating all the time, there is a recognition that we need to phase this out next – but, obviously, it’s a huge milestone getting coal out of the mix, and more people are really starting to think about gas.”

Emissions

Since the UK began its rapid downscale of coal in 2012, it shut down 15 coal power plants, which made power sector emissions plummet by 74% – from 160 MtCO2e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) to 41 MtCO2e in 2023.

EMBER reported that this rapid decline in coal power from 2012 to 2023 avoided 880 MtCO2e, equivalent to more than double the UK’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2023.

In 2023, emissions from electricity supply accounted for only 11.5% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions.

How they did it

Rai-Roche spoke to Daily Maverick and explained that they boiled it down to four lessons:

1 The UK set a stable, clear policy that had bipartisan political support

In 2008, the UK introduced the Climate Change Act, which was the first legally binding commitment to reduce emissions by any country in the world.

All major political parties endorsed the act. Rai-Roche said: “That basically gave business and industry the confidence to know that this policy objective was stable.”

Rai-Roche explained that while the Labour government introduced the Climate Change Act, it was the economics of renewables vs coal that ensured there was partisan support, “because it didn’t make economic sense anymore to keep building coal”.

2 They set regulations that support that policy objectives

For example, in 2009, UK energy secretary Ed Miliband announced that “the era of new unabated coal has come to an end”, and the UK government ruled that there would be no new coal without carbon capture.

“It turns out that carbon capture technology was just too expensive, so that effectively ruled out building new coal plants,” Rai-Roche said.

3 They made polluters pay

The EU Emissions Trading System, introduced in 2008, made burning coal more expensive, which shifted the energy mix towards gas and renewables. This added to the overall phase-out of coal in the UK.

4 They supported the roll-out of renewables and expansion of the grid

The UK incentivised renewable energy investments and upgrades to their electricity through the 2013 Energy Act. This was followed by electricity market reforms, which significantly upgraded infrastructure to accommodate more renewables. These moves, along with setting a carbon price, made coal economically unviable.

A lesson for South Africa

South Africa, the most coal-reliant economy among the G20, with the sixth-largest coal fleet in the world for operational capacity, could learn from the UK’s experience.

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently signed South Africa’s Climate Change Bill into law, and while it is not fully operational yet, it introduces a carbon budget system, where companies that exceed their carbon budget will be expected to pay a higher rate of carbon tax on those “excess” greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more: ‘A big relief’ – Six ways the law will fight Climate Change now that Ramaphosa has signed the bill

However, there has been pushback that this “outsourcing” of the consequence of a failure to comply with a carbon budget is wholly inadequate and could subvert the crucial goals of the Climate Change Act.

“I think there was an amount of scepticism in the UK, but people are really starting to realise the benefits of renewable energy – not only in terms of energy security, after the gas price spikes in the last few years, but health and competitive benefits,” Rai-Roche said.

“In South Africa it is really interesting, because at the height of the crisis [of load shedding] people turned to solar,” he said, “and South Africa has such great solar potential and wind potential.

“It’s a real opportunity for the most industrialised nation in Africa to really drive forward this kind of energy transition on the continent.”

Storage

“Wind and solar are intermittent,” Rai-Roche acknowledged, “that’s why storage is so important.”

He said long-duration electricity and battery storage is what the UK, and all countries looking to decarbonise their power systems, will need more of.

He explained that the UK currently has about 3 gigawatts (GW) of long-duration electricity storage (LDES) capacity, which is all pumped hydro storage. However, it is expected to see significant growth in LDES capacity in the coming years

And the UK added 1.5GW of new battery storage capacity in 2024, and by the end of the year the total grid-scale battery storage capacity was 3.5GW. RenewableUK predicts that the UK’s battery storage capacity will quadruple by 2030.

Trade unions say, ‘no worker left behind’

UK trade unions have praised the closure of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station as a model for a just energy transition. Much like South Africa, the UK has deep roots in coal, being the first country to use it for electricity in 1882.

Trade Union representatives reported that since 2015, they were aware of Ratcliff's eventual closure and worked to ensure a smooth transition for the 154 workers. Starting in 2020, unions negotiated with Uniper, the company that owns Ratcliffe, to create a solid transition plan.

Chris Howe, a GMB Union representative, emphasised the importance of unions having a seat at the table, noting that it helped ease the stress of the closure process.

Though job losses were inevitable, the unions and Uniper implemented several strategies to support workers. These included internal transfers to new jobs at Uniper, external opportunities through partnerships, funded training courses and enhanced voluntary redundancy packages.

Sending the right signals

The International Energy Agency has recommended that countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) need to phase out coal by 2030, and non-OECD countries by 2040.

“South Africa needs to set a clear phase-out date, which would establish that policy certainty. And from there you can start thinking about what would incentivise renewables,” Rai-Roche said.

Under South Africa’s 2019 Integrated Resource Plan, 11.3GW of coal power from seven old plants was set to be decommissioned by 2030. But because of energy generation constraints, in 2023, Eskom revised this plan, delaying the decommissioning. And the new IRP is vague on decommissioning targets for coal.

Read more: ‘A shoddy piece of work’ — experts decry South Africa’s new blueprint for energy

“And this is not going to be an easy process. It’s a huge challenge to go from 85% of your power coming from one source to then trying to integrate all these new things – build up the grid to make sure that community isn’t destroyed by this process,” Rai-Roche said.

However, he emphasised that this starts with setting a coal phase-out date, which also inspires business confidence.

“At the moment you know there’s a lot of money in clean energy. But why would you go to South Africa which isn’t sending the right signals to the international market? Why would you go there when you can go to the US or Germany or Spain where they’re clear on the direction of travel and they’ve got the incentives in place?” DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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