Chart: The UK is about to stop using coal to produce electricity

The country that once boasted the world’s first coal-fired power plant is now set to eliminate the highly polluting fossil fuel from its power grid.

In late September, the United Kingdom will shutter the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, the country’s last operational coal-fired power plant. The closure indicates just how far the U.K. has come in its bid to do away with dirty sources of electricity. 

The first-ever coal-fired power plant opened in London in 1882. In the ensuing century and a half, burning coal became the world’s most common way to produce electricity, a title it still retains today.

But pressure is mounting from scientists, activists, and regulators to stop using the fuel source, which emits far more carbon dioxide at the point of combustion than fossil gas does. The increasing availability of cheap, clean energy has also shredded the economics of coal in many regions, making arguments for its continued use go up in smoke.

This financial trouble, made more dire by climate regulations, has helped drive coal off of the U.K.’s grid, in line with the country’s current goal of phasing out the fossil fuel by the start of October.

It’s a remarkable transformation for a country whose grid has relied heavily on coal for much of its existence.

The rapid change was made possible by the U.K.’s embrace of wind power, both on- and offshore. Over the last decade, this form of renewable energy has surged in the U.K., from generating around 8 percent of the country’s electricity in 2013 to 29 percent in 2023. Coal has plummeted over that same time period, falling from 36 percent of power generation to 1 percent last year — and then to a (literally) vanishingly small portion this year.

The country’s grid cleanup comes amid a backdrop of declining electricity demand. The U.K. used 17 percent less electricity in 2023 than it did in 2013, per Ember, as households adopted more efficient appliances, natural gas prices rose, and its economy shifted away from energy-intensive manufacturing jobs. Demand has continued to decline even as the country has started to embrace heat pumps and electric vehicles.

As a result of the U.K.’s rapidly decarbonizing grid and falling electricity demand, emissions from the country’s power sector have taken a nosedive, helping the nation reduce overall emissions to the lowest levels since 1879 — three years before that first coal-fired power station was even built.

Still, planet-warming fossil gas remains the single biggest source of electricity in the U.K. The country has led the way in moving past one form of polluting power, but now it will have to do the same with another if it is to meet its rapidly approaching goal of decarbonizing the grid by 2035.