Britain goes coal free as nonrenewable fuel sources edged out

Britain will pass a considerable landmark – at midnight on Wednesday it will have gone 2 full months without burning coal to produce power.

A decade earlier about 40%of the nation’s electrical energy came from coal; coronavirus is part of the story, but far from all.

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

The four staying 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 because.

The present coal-free period smashes the previous record of 18 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes which was embeded in June in 2015.

The figures apply to Britain just, as Northern Ireland is not on the National Grid.

But it exposes simply how dramatic the transformation of our energy system has actually been in the last decade.

That the nation does not need to utilize the fuel that utilized to be the foundation of the grid is thanks to a massive financial investment in renewable resource over the last decade.

Two examples highlight simply how much the UK’s energy networks have actually changed.

A years earlier just 3%of the country’s electrical energy came from wind and solar, which many people viewed as an expensive distraction.

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