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The death of Old King Coal

For me the term power station always conjures up images of monster buildings with attached chimneys and cooling towers.


But times are changing.


Over the last 5 years the decrease in coal powered generation in the UK has been dramatic; falling from 42% to 6% of power generated, an 86% decrease. From the charts it appears that we are soon to have quarters with no coal generation.

In the weekly data for the past year this decrease is even more marked. During the summer months, when electricity demand falls by about 20% and solar generation becomes more active, there were weeks during which coal only provided 0.26% of total generation, and the UK had 1,898 coal-free hours during 2018 (ie almost 80 days).

So, to start with the basic questions. How many are left? Where are they? What size are they? Who owns them? How are they planning to deal with the increasing pressure to decarbonise electricity generation in the UK?

As usual Wikipedia has the answer, that being seven; five in England, one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland, with a total generating capacity of 11 MW (ranging from 0.5-2.0 GW).

The operators are a list of the usual suspects in the UK generation market.

Operating coal-fired generating capacity in the UK

From the data for the past year it seems that the stations were only running near to capacity on a single week in the last year (that of 26/2/2018; also NB the graphs only apply to GB stations, as NI is part of the Irish single power market) and for most of the summer they were essentially switched off.

Coal-fired power stations are large assets that require long-term financing, can't be started or stopped rapidly and are uneconomic if left idle. From the Wikipedia page it seem that the future of the stations is either conversation to natural gas or biomass fuel or closure and decommissioning.

Is this an unalloyed good thing? In an ideal world it should be. Saying goodbye to the most carbon intensive of fossil fuels has to be a goal that we want to make swift progress towards. Indeed the DBEIS is planning on the last coal-fired station closing by 2025.

But why not switch them off today and save their 15 M tonnes of CO2 emissions? Well for that we need to know if we could have done without the 10 GW of coal-fired generation that was on-line during the week of 26/2/18.

But that is another set of questions and before turning to them I feel the need to revisit the baseline data obtained from Wikipedia.

PS Even while I was drafting this post the shift from coal-powered generation in the UK has taken another step forward with the announcement of a closure date for the Cottam power station in Nottinghamshire and the commissioning of the Hornsey One windfarm off the Yorkshire coast.

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