Not since 1882 has the United Kingdom’s reliance on coal for energy dipped to zero. This year it happened not once or twice, but four times.
This is not the solution to life’s problems but the historic marking is important. There is not a person alive in the UK today that has not relied on coal energy throughout their life. A big part of changing economic and cultural paradigms is by experiencing the world without those same constructs. Last week, the UK showed a series of dips down to zero in coal/energy use, giving a bright marker to many green activists who have been fighting for cleaner energy consumption for decades.
It is thought to be the first time the UK has been without electricity from coal since the world’s first centralised public coal-fired generator opened at Holborn Viaduct in London, in 1882, according to the Carbon Brief website which reports on climate science and energy policy.
The record lows in coal power generation come as the UK enters the summer months, which sees lower demand for electricity, and with more than half of the country’s coal capacity out of action, for example for planned maintenance.
But there have also been a series of recent closures of coal-fired power plants as they become less economic, while plants such as Drax in North Yorkshire have partially switched to burning “biomass”.
This environmental moment comes in tandem with reports that Portugal—considered only a decade ago to be one of the worst offenders in carbon pollution—ran completely on renewable energy for four straight days.
According to Zero.ong, and brought to our attention by SolarCrunch, Portugal ran on renewable energy alone for 4 straight days last week. This 100% was preceded by more than 70 percent of its electricityfrom renewable sources of energy during the first quarter of 2013, and 63% for all of 2014. Portugal stopped burning coal in 1994.
Very cool.