On Monday, September 30, the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in the UK will shut down. Its towering chimneys have loomed over the monotonous landscape of this corner of Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands, since the late 1960s. The plant was the last remaining coal-fired power station in the UK, and its closure makes the country the first G7 member to move away from coal for good.
Even though the moment is largely symbolic – coal now accounts for only around 1% of national electricity production – it is still highly significant; the British Empire was largely dependent on this fuel, once dubbed "black gold," but also one of the worst CO2 emitters.
The first industrial revolution would never have taken root in the UK, spanning from Manchester to Doncaster and up to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, without daring financiers and enterprising engineers like James Watt and George Stephenson. Most importantly, it relied on the vast coal reserves in its subsoil, stretching from the Welsh valleys to the coalfields of County Durham, Yorkshire and the Fife peninsula north of Edinburgh. Coal had been mined since the Middle Ages, but the discovery of the steam engine and its use in mines sparked a boom in its extraction and use for transportation, heating and electricity generation.
The first coal-fired power plant in the UK, designed by Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Light Company (the inventor of the lightbulb), opened in 1882 in London's Holborn district, serving wealthy households and industries in the East End. The plant was a quick success, leading to the proliferation of coal plants, initially in the city center and later in the suburbs, as authorities recognized the health risks of "smog" in central London. By 1920, 90% of the country's electricity was generated by coal, and the UK was the world's leading exporter of the fuel until the dawn of the Second World War.
Coal also shaped the UK's social history as well as its landscapes, which are still dotted with "pit villages" (mining villages) in Yorkshire and County Durham. The first worker protection laws were passed in the mid-19th century, banning women and children under 10 from working in the mines. The first trade unions grew out of miners' "lodges," often founded by members of the Methodist Church (a protestant denomination). From the 1950s onwards, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) became a key player in political negotiations, and its strike actions brought the country to a standstill in 1972 and 1974.
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