Another coal-free record for the UK

Source: Bloomberg

From Bloomberg:

The U.K. has gone more than five days without burning coal, the longest streak the country has managed without burning the fuel since the Industrial Revolution.

Great Britain was an early adopter of renewable energy and has more offshore wind turbines installed than any other country. It also has fields of solar panels that are meeting more and more demand as old traditional power plants close permanently.

The nation will quit burning coal for power entirely by 2025 and the policy ambition has seen the country’s emissions tumble to pre-industrial levels. Coal’s portion of the power generation mix has dropped from 40 percent just six years ago to 5 percent last year.

No coal has been used for power generation by stations in the U.K. since about 1 p.m. in London on May 1, according to grid data on Bloomberg. The previous record from earlier this year was 90 hours. Other sources have stepped in and on Saturday, wind generated as much as 27 percent of the country’s power followed by gas at 25 percent and nuclear at 24 percent.

“As more and more renewables come onto our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to increasingly seem like the new normal,” National Grid said. “We believe that by 2025 we will be able to fully operate Great Britain’s electricity system with zero carbon.”

An impressive achievement.  Note that they are, like the USA, using gas as a replacement for coal, but also that they state that by 2025, they will be carbon-free, which implies generation via gas will cease.  Note also that 24% of generation is coming from nuclear, and that will rise as Hinkley is (eventually!) completed.

The moral of the story is this.  If the UK can clean coal out of electricity generation, we all can. And countries in lower latitudes, with better solar resources, will find it even easier.  How about this target—that by 2030 all developed countries replace coal in their grid with renewables?