Britain has said goodbye to coal power, some 142 years after Thomas Edison opened the world's first coal-fired electricity plant in London. The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottingham, the last coal-fired power plant in the country, closed on Monday, the Guardian reports. The plant, which opened in 1967, employed more than 3,000 people at its peak but only 170 were left to gather in the canteen Monday to watch a live stream of the generating units being turned off for the last time. Uniper, the plant's owner, says many workers will remain during the two-year decommissioning process, reports the AP.
The closure follows a rapid shift toward renewable energy in the UK, the BBC reports. Around 80% of the country's electricity was generated by coal in the 1980s, and almost 40% as recently as 2012. It was down to 1% last year. Renewable energy, meanwhile, generated 7% of the UK's power in 2010, two years after the country first set legally binding climate targets. It was up to more than 50% in the first half of this year. "This is the final chapter of a remarkably swift transition from the country that started the industrial revolution," said Phil MacDonald at global energy thinktank Ember, per the Guardian.
The closure "marks the end of an era and coal workers can be rightly proud of their work powering our country for over 140 years," energy minister Michael Shanks said. The UK is the first of the Group of Seven major economies to phase out coal power, the AP reports, though countries including Sweden reached the milestone earlier. In Europe, the largest remaining coal power plants are in Poland and Germany. (More coal stories.)
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