Britain to set a record of not using coal for 2 months

Largest coal plant now burning wood pellets that come from the US.


Britain is about to pass a significant landmark - at midnight on Wednesday it will have gone two full months without burning coal to generate power.

A decade ago about 40% of the country's electricity came from coal; coronavirus is part of the story, but far from all.

When Britain went into lockdown, electricity demand plummeted; the National Grid responded by taking power plants off the network.

The four remaining coal-fired plants were among the first to be shut down.

The last coal generator came off the system at midnight on 9 April. No coal has been burnt for electricity since.

The current coal-free period smashes the previous record of 18 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes which was set in June last year.

snip

Two examples illustrate just how much the UK's energy networks have changed.

A decade ago just 3% of the country's electricity came from wind and solar, which many people saw as a costly distraction.

Now the UK has the biggest offshore wind industry in the world, as well as the largest single wind farm, completed off the coast of Yorkshire last year.

At the same time Drax, the country's biggest power plant, has been taking a different path to renewable energy.

The plant, which is also in Yorkshire, generates 5% of the country's electricity.

A decade ago, it was the biggest consumer of coal in the UK but has been switching to compressed wood pellets.

snip

Breaking it down, renewables were responsible for 37% of electricity supplied to the network versus 35% for fossil fuels.

Nuclear accounted for about 18% and imports for the remaining 10% or so, according to figures from the online environmental journal, Carbon Brief.

[link:https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52973089|

There's a bar graph showing the breakdown for low-carbon energy sources world wide in 2018 by EIA. Shows Wind to be 46% compared Nuclear.