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The UK's last coal plant will sigh out its final pollutants Monday before shutting down for good and officially ending the country's century and a half of coal production. Nottinghamshire's Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant was the last of its kind following Britain's 2015 commitment to close all coal power plants by 2025. Ratcliffe was originally scheduled to shut down in 2022 but stayed open after Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe entered a gas crisis.
The Ratcliffe plant once had 3,000 engineers but only employs 170 staff now. That group will gather to watch a livestream of the plant being turned off, and over 100 of them are set to work on decommissioning the plant over the next two years. Many of the other employees will enter new jobs at different power plants owned by Uniper, Raticliffe's German owner, while others will enter training programs to work on other aspects of the industry.
Britain opened the world's first coal power plant in 1882, London's Holborn Viaduct, with the help of Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Light Company. Coal has played a major part in the UK until very recently. According to a report from energy think tank Ember, coal was responsible for 39 percent of the UK's energy supply in 2012 but shrunk to just two percent in 2019. The decrease in coal production was reportedly equal to double the amount of all greenhouse gases used in the UK in 2023. Between 2012 and 2023, wind and solar generation also increased from six percent to a 34 percent share of the UK's energy. Britain still has a long way to go, but this step has made it the first G7 country to remove all coal power production.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Thursday October 03, @01:19PM (17 children)
What's to celebrate if a single plant is shut down? As of 2024, there are 1,183 coal fired power plants in operation in China. According to an NPR story from 2023, the Chinese are building two new ones each week. Why does responsibility to "save the planet" fall solely on Western nations?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/ [statista.com]
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin [npr.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03, @01:36PM (2 children)
No one said it did, bucksnort.
(Score: -1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Thursday October 03, @03:06PM (1 child)
Apparently, this is cir/cos/cyr/eir/his/heir/nir/quis/her/hir/teir/their/xyr/hir/yos/zir/ver attempt an ad hominem insult, but the dictionary says Bucksnort is a town in TN named after a moonshiner who was fond of whiskey. Sure, why not?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday October 03, @05:34PM
Hey DadaDoofy, you hit 'submit' so fast you forgot to address the rest of what the AC said. ;)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday October 03, @03:42PM (3 children)
It is an achievement for that country that they have said what they were going to do and they have achieved it. It was the last coal fired plant in the country.
It doesn't. What can you do the change China's attitude? I don't think that complaining on here will achieve much, do you?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday October 03, @05:38PM (1 child)
It also is a win for China by weakening an economic and military rival.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 04, @04:05PM
reducing dependence on non-renewables that often comes from other countries, rival or not, is not weakening themselves. russia taught europe a lesson about that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Thursday October 03, @11:25PM
For what it's worth, China is also investing [economist.com] heavily [thediplomat.com] in Nuclear
(Score: 4, Informative) by bloodnok on Thursday October 03, @04:59PM (9 children)
It doesn't.
China is doing a lot to bring down its emissions. That 2 power stations per week statistic is all very well, but here is a longer term graph showing that the carbon intensity of chinese power production is in a steady fall: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&country=~CHN [ourworldindata.org]
Or here's another one showing solar generation in China: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&country=~CHN [ourworldindata.org]
China is decarbonizing its power generation at an incredible rate. They have installed more solar in the last year than the US has in its entire history, and in a period of 9 months installed more capacity than the entire UK's peak power requirements: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-26/china-added-more-solar-panels-in-2023-than-us-did-in-its-entire-history?embedded-checkout=true [bloomberg.com]
Western nations are far from shining examples of responsibility in this regard. We *all* need to do our bit. There is plenty to blame China for, but as far as decarbonizing their economy goes, they are world leaders.
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The Major
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Thursday October 03, @05:48PM (6 children)
In other words, it's still increasing GHG emissions from power generation.
UK has done what you allegedly value, but China gets lauded.
(Score: 2) by bloodnok on Thursday October 03, @08:38PM (5 children)
The UK is making good strides. It has scrapped coal but still burns a lot of carbon for power generation. It has a large number of gas power plants, and the Drax facility is one of the largest emitters in Europe, so it still has some way to go.
I am not lauding the Chinese. As I said there is plenty to blame China for, but singling them out as a problem in a discussion about decarbonizing power generation is either disingenuous or inaccurate.
The Chinese state is embracing a clean technological future while some in the west (Canada) are more interested in building new pipelines for fossil fuels. Ironically, some of those pipelines are supposed to be to supply China with fossil fuels for the next 30 years or so. At China's current rate of progress that doesn't look like a good bet.
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The Major
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 04, @12:16AM (4 children)
Or the other thing, honest and accurate. Again, the Chinese are the largest source of GHG emissions from power generation and still growing. Selecting graph presentations that hide that indicate that maybe we should look elsewhere for the alleged "disingenuous and inaccurate".
(Score: 2) by bloodnok on Friday October 04, @05:33PM (3 children)
Really? That graph just shows what it shows. I never claimed or intended to imply that China is not a huge and increasing emitter. It is growing its industrial base at a tremendous and alarming rate, but it it is doing so with a greater amount of renewable energy than has ever been done before.
To go back to the original point: no, responsibility to "save the planet" does not fall solely on Western nations.
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The Major
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday October 04, @06:16PM (2 children)
Exactly. And what I'm noting is what it doesn't show - namely the continued increase in GHG emissions from Chinese power generation. This remains particularly dishonest when one considers your narrative - that "China is doing a lot to bring down its emissions" - it's not. It's just producing a bunch of renewable generation capacity in addition to its still growing fossil fuel power generation. Moving on, your narrative then segued into:
Western nations are much better than China by your metric! Let's view that carbon intensity graph again, this time [ourworldindata.org] with the G7 countries (all solidly developed world) added. Without exception every one of the G7 countries has a better carbon intensity. Only one, Japan comes close due to a sudden increase in GHG emissions around 2011, but it's still a sixth lower. France in particular is incredibly low at less than 10% of the same carbon intensity of its energy production.
The bottom line here is that if GHG emissions are important to you, then where they come from is important too. China generates [ourworldindata.org] 26% of all GHG emissions (in 2022). In comparison, the US generates 11%. India is in third place at 7.5%. The UK is under 1%.
(Score: 2) by bloodnok on Friday October 04, @11:56PM (1 child)
I picked that graph because it shows that even as China is ramping up its power generation (and I have not disputed the that much is coming from fossil fuels) it is managing to lower the percentage that produces C02. As far as I can see, this means that the amount of new power they are generating from renewables is greater than the amount of new power from fossil fuels.
If you want to say that China is not doing a lot to bring down its emissions when it has just made the largest annual increase in solar generation that we have ever seen, then fine, it's a matter of perspective and our perspectives differ. I still believe that creating that largest annual increase in solar generation makes it a world leader. If doing more than anyone else has ever done is not world leading, then again it's a matter of perspective and we can disagree.
And yes, western nations are better than China on those totals. I don't and have not disagreed with that. I do still disagree that the West is doing the lion's share of decarbonization, which is where we started.
For giggles, you might also want to take a look at the per-capita rather than total emissions.
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The Major
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 05, @05:24AM
Do you have a reason for that disagreement? Your links don't support that claim, for example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03, @09:51PM (1 child)
USA seems to drop faster. So do most of the western countries that i looked at. And China seems to start leveling flat.
I don't know, looks like the graph you pointed out seems to point otherwise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 04, @12:09AM
It's also pretty useless without knowing how much electrical energy each country uses. Congo is way up on that graph, and not getting better, but I bet their actual emissions are minuscule compared to anyone in the G20.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Tokolosh on Thursday October 03, @02:04PM (10 children)
Arthur Scargill has a lot to answer for, with his climate-destroying actions.
Who wants to admit that Thatcher was right all along? crickets...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday October 03, @02:25PM (8 children)
The problem with what Thatcher did was that she did it in a cruel and punitive way to break the trade unions. Unfortunately for us all, her ultra-free-market approach was incompatible with developing the new civillian nuclear power capacity that we needed and we ended up burning gas instead. She broke the British nuclear power industry too. With Thatcher, as with Reagan, it was all about ideology and sticking it to the "commies." She did such a great job that people of my generation were and still are extremely wary of unions. It's a shame, mine has done good things.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday October 03, @03:24PM (6 children)
That's a bit of a one-sided explanation. The trade unions were doing their best to break the government and incited conflict. Random linky:
https://www.historyhit.com/when-the-lights-went-out-in-britain-the-story-of-the-three-day-working-week/ [historyhit.com]
Successive governments have continued to fail to build out UK nuclear (or other generating) capability, both conservatives and labour i.e. they're all rubbish and ducked the question until it was "too late".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by turgid on Thursday October 03, @03:43PM (5 children)
The three day working week was a decade earlier, in the 1970s. Thatcher set about the destruction of trade unionism and the Welfare State (the post-WW II social contract) because she was ideologically opposed. Other countries (e.g. Germany) have strong unions and have had a much more mature attitude, involving them in decisions for the common good and building a strong economy. They could hardly be called Communists. I was very young during the Miners Strike and I swallowed a lot of the anti-union propaganda. In fact, when I went into nuclear power, I almost didn't join the union (the Engineers and Managers Association) because of the propaganda I had grown up with. I joined, and was pleasantly surprised and am still a member to this day (it's now called Prospect).
UK governments have been very short-sighted since Thatcher on security of energy supply. It's a national security issue. They've made us dependent on greenhouse gas emitters (coal, oil, gas) and unreliable foreign sources. Thatcher pensioned off our nuclear experts. We used to know how to design and build them. Now we buy them from the French. A friend of mine still works in the industry.
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth with their irresponsible scare-mongering regarding nuclear power have not helped. Ironically, thanks to their anti-nuclear propaganda, we ended up with governments too timid to invest in long-term nuclear base load and therefore burning oil and gas. The German Greens managed to get the entire German nuclear power industry shut down. As a result, the Germans had to import more electricity from France, generated by French PWRs and to mine and burn much more dirty coal.
You only get one life and I'm well into mine now, and seriously disappointed with how all this has turned out, despite my own little efforts. The world is crazy. Fortunately we don't live for ever. I don't want to be around in another hundred years when Climate Change and rampant right-wing authoritarianism have taken over. Sorry to be negative, but it's not looking good, is it?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 04, @12:17AM
The real reason the Germans are mining coal : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEvfD4C6ow [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday October 04, @05:51AM (3 children)
> decade earlier, in the 1970s
Maggie Thatcher took power in the 1970s.
> They could hardly be called Communists.
I entirely agree. You were the one who called the unions Communists!
> rampant right-wing authoritarianism have taken over
Well the UK has been bumping along on the middle ground for a couple of decades. David Cameron, Tony Blair, Keir Starmer are/were all pretty centerist. There was a few year blip with BoJo et alia but they only lasted about 5 years and, I believe, did considerable harm to the right wing arm of the tories.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday October 04, @11:51AM (2 children)
The point I was making was that the three day week was 73-74 and the miners strike was 83-84. Yes, Maggie got in in 79. The way the unions were portrayed in the press back in the 80s was that they were far-left radicals, essentially Communists. I knew a young Tory who told me that the Labour Party, strongly associated with many of the unions was Communist. I've read Alexei Sayle's memoirs in recent years. The Labour Party distanced itself from the Communists after Stalin came to power in Russia and oppressed and murdered millions of people.
In recent years the right had bandied about terms like "far left" and "undemocratic Marxists" and the creepy "cultural Marxism." They were even labelling Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a "socialist."
There's a lot of misinformation going about. It's more important than ever to do your research and to employ critical thinking skills.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Friday October 04, @03:18PM (1 child)
Okay, I guess I don't subscribe to the argument that there was a strong discontinuity between the unions in 73-74 and the unions in 83. 10 years is a long time - but, to take a contemporary example, I don't think it is correct to suggest that the Tory party in 2014 (two years before Brexit) is so radically different from the Tory party in 2024. Cameron is out, but Boris Johnson is still a big figure. Nigel Farage is still a lurking evil.
I wasn't born in the 70s so my evidence is second hand!
Just to be explicit, I'm not trying to link the things that happened in 1980 with modern politics. I'm not claiming Rishi Sunak is a socialist, nor that the 1980s (or 70s) coal miners were communists. I'm just trying to put context into, and mitigate, your demonisation of Thatcher. As with all PMs, (and people who try to do things in general) she had to make some difficult decisions to try to keep the country moving.
Doing stuff is hard.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday October 04, @06:30PM
I don't think it is correct to suggest that the Tory party in 2014 (two years before Brexit) is so radically different from the Tory party in 2024.
It's very different. The hard-right ERG took over, essentially when Johnson became leader. There was a purge of the remaining One Nation moderates (Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve). They've been tacking further and further to the right to try to out-do Farage.
I'd bet money on the Conservative Party being taken over by Farage's Reform UK soon. We might have seen our last ever Conservative Prime Minister, and that was Rishi Sunak.
The ERG used to be a lunatic fringe group of Little Englanders. John Major (Conservative PM) famously referred to their predecessors as "bastards." Margaret Thatcher was apparently the architect of the EU Single Market. Despite their admiration for her, the ERG took us out of that Single Market.
Their current preoccupation is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). They want to take us out of it because it's "a foreign court" and we British should not be subject to the rule of Johnny Foreigner. This is despite us participating in its running. The ultimate irony is, their great hero Winston Churchill, was one of the primary architects of Human Rights and the ECHR.
These swivel-eyed loons have forgotten their history. They have forgotten how we got here. They have forgotten the horrors leading up to and including the Second World War.
All of these things they find so abhorrent, all this working together with our neighbours, was championed, designed and implemented by the very generation who had to suffer that horrific war, to ensure such things would never happen again. The NHS and the Welfare State also came out if it.
They are ignorant and blind. They are dragging us back into a Dickensian society. They are worse than fools. They are ideological zealots. They do not listen to reason.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Thursday October 03, @04:24PM
I think we are of a similar generation, but I will admit to being perhaps a generation before yours. I am full of admiration for most unions.
However, during the coal miners' strike the involved unions did as much as they could to disrupt the entire country and wanted the Government to subsidise the mines that were uneconomic. That wasn't a good fiscal policy.
While the closure of the pits created terrible hardship for those whose livelihood depended upon them the UK has overcome those problems. Could successive governments have done better? Of course they could have.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday October 03, @03:49PM
Arthur Scargill does indeed have a lot to answer for. However, he and his radical flying pickets hijacked many of the peaceful demonstrations. If you speak to miners who were about at the time they will tell you the real story. They will also tell you the real story about the police sent to - ahem - monitor and supervise the picket lines. The British Broadcasting Corporation was very careful how it reported the miners strike.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03, @03:36PM
UK Coal - https://www.xkcd.com/2992/ [xkcd.com]
Had lunch once with a young engineer in Wales. In the distance he pointed out two gentle sloped mountains...and said that there was once a third mountain in the middle. The entire peak had been removed by Welsh miners, working in near-slave-labor-conditions under the English overlords of the day.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Thursday October 03, @03:53PM
And Sizewell B was the last new nuclear power station to be commissioned, synchronised with the electricity grid in 1995.
Did you know we had working fast reactor prototypes in the UK, exporting electricity as well? Yes, we knew how to use old plutonium to make electricity.
But North Sea Gas.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday October 03, @04:43PM (2 children)
Don't they make kerosene from coal? My brain says they can still use coal, just use a kerosene process on extraction. Then switch to large internal combustion generators.
My brain is telling me the UK has a lot of coal, and coal related industry, but don't remember the source.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday October 03, @05:36PM
Unless you can find some better figures - these are from Statistica [statista.com] - it doesn't look like there is that much left to mine.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Thursday October 03, @05:40PM
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.