Cleaning up Europe’s power sector: we’re getting there
On September 30, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the last coal-fired power station in the United Kingdom, closed for good.
It’s hard to understate the relevance of the event: England, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, which for 140 years has depended on coal to generate electricity, has closed the last of its coal-fired power plants.
If just ten years ago, when almost 40% of the country’s electricty was generated by burnng coal (at its peak it was 70%), anybody had said that the UK could stop using it completely by 2024, most experts would have laughed at them. But here we are: if the current government’s plans are fulfilled, the country’s electricity grid will be practically emission free by 2030, with only a small percentage of nuclear, and more than half of the generation coming from offshore wind, the logical resource.
But the UK is no exception. Across Europe, gas demand in 2024 is on track, if forecasts are met, to be the lowest since 1984, while coal consumption has collapsed, with a 19% drop. At this time, which we could consider historic, Europe already obtains more energy from the sun and wind than from fossil fuels.
