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Stop Coal for Three Days! The British Power Grid Moves towards the Goal of "Decoal"
The British National Grid Corporation stopped using coal for three days and used clean energy to generate electricity. This is the longest period since the 1880s. The UK power grid has just achieved two days of power generation without using any fossil fuels. In April last year, British power generation was "coal-free" for the first time for 24 hours, becoming the first "coal-free day" in the UK in 135 years without the use of coal power. These moves show that the UK is moving towards the goal of phasing out coal power by 2025.In 1882, the world's first centralized public coal-fired generating unit was put into operation in London, making the UK the first country in the world to use coal power. With the complete change of energy structure, the UK is expected to become the first country to bid farewell to coal power.
It is understood that on the "coal-free day", the energy used in the UK's entire electricity supply mainly comes from natural gas, nuclear power, wind power, biomass power generation and imported energy. The relevant person in charge of the State Grid Corporation of China said that thanks to highly diversified and flexible power sources, the British energy structure is changing, and fossil energy is gradually being replaced by clean energy.
In the 1860s, Watt's improved steam engine kicked off the British Industrial Revolution, and coal became Britain's main source of power. Britain's coal reserves are very abundant, which became an important support for the vigorous development of the British Industrial Revolution. In the mid-19th century, Britain became the world's largest coal producer. With the outbreak of the two world wars, the British domestic economy was hit, and the coal industry was seriously affected, and even gradually became a "burden" for the government. The Thatcher era promoted the privatization of the coal industry and used market forces to gradually eliminate backward production capacity, causing the scale of the British coal industry to continue to shrink.
In addition, environmental pollution has intensified during the development of coal fuel. The London smog incident in 1952 made the British government aware of the heavy environmental hazards caused by coal burning. After conducting investigations and studies, the government promulgated the Clean Air Act in 1956 to reduce air pollution. The bill stipulates a ban on black smoke emissions, raising the height of chimneys, requiring the establishment of smoke-free zones, providing subsidies to homeowners to switch to smokeless fuel for heating, and moving coal power plants out of cities. Government intervention in the environment soon led to lower domestic coal consumption. In the 1970s, the discovery of North Sea oil fields prompted the British government to transform the energy structure, and coal for home heating was increasingly replaced by North Sea natural gas. In the 1980s, nuclear power grew to approximately 25% of UK national electricity generation. In the 1990s, natural gas power generation increased to about 30% of the country's power generation, replacing coal on a large scale. In 2015, renewable energy generation accounted for 25% of the country's electricity supply. In December 2015, the last deep coal mine in North Yorkshire in the UK was officially closed, which meant that the coal industry, which had been the lifeblood of British industry for the past three hundred years, completely bid farewell to the historical stage. In 2016, the British government stated that it hoped that the last coal power plants in the UK would be closed by 2025. According to official statistics, coal-fired power accounted for less than 7% of the UK's total electricity generation last year.
However, experts say that judging from the current situation, the UK's ability to achieve coal-free power generation in the short term will not be through renewable energy, but will rely on another fossil fuel - natural gas. Andrew Krusland, an expert at the Durham Energy Institute, said that natural gas power generation currently accounts for 40% of the UK's total electricity and has also become the main source of domestic heating. The consumption of natural gas is more than 8 times that of coal. Reliance on gas leaves the UK vulnerable to shocks in international markets and is "far from clean enough" to meet the UK's legal targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the problem with renewable energy such as solar energy, wind energy, and water energy is that it is "intermittent" and depends on the sunshine time, wind strength, and water flow conditions. In comparison, natural gas power generation is more stable and can guarantee supply 24 hours a day throughout the year. , so to replace coal power in the short term, the UK seems to have no better choice.
