On Monday September 30, the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in the United Kingdom will close its doors. Since the late 1960s, its large chimneys had dominated the monotonous landscape of this corner of Nottinghamshire, east of the Midlands. The plant was the last coal-fired power station still operating in the United Kingdom and its shutdown makes the country the first G7 member to permanently phase out coal.
Even if the moment is largely symbolic – coal only accounts for around 1% of national electricity production – it is still very significant, the existence of the British Empire being largely dependent on this fuel for a long time. qualified as black gold but which is one of the worst emitters of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The first industrial revolution would not have been born in the United Kingdom, between Manchester, Doncaster and Newcastle-upon-Tyne without the presence of adventurous financiers, enterprising engineers (James Watt, George Stephenson) nor especially without the presence of enormous reserves of coal in its subsoil, from the valleys of Wales to the coalfields of County Durham, Yorkshire and the Fife peninsula, north of Edinburgh. Fuel had been exploited since the Middle Ages but the discovery of the steam engine and its use in mines led to the explosion of its exploitation and use, for locomotion, heating or the generation of electricity.
Designed by Edison Electrict Light Company, the company of Thomas Edison (inventor of the electric light bulb), the first British coal-fired power station opened in 1882 in the Holborn district, in the heart of London, to supply wealthy individuals and industries from the East End. Success was rapid, coal-fired power stations multiplied, first in the heart of cities, then on the outskirts, as the authorities became aware of the dangers for public health of episodes of “smog” in the heart of London. In 1920, 90% of the country's electricity was generated by coal and the United Kingdom was the world's leading exporter of the fuel until the dawn of the Second World War.
Decline began in the 1970s
Coal has also shaped its social history just like its landscapes, still dotted with “pit villages” (mining villages) in Yorkshire or County Durham. The first laws to protect workers were adopted in the mid-19th century.e century, to prohibit the work of women and children under 10 in mines. The first unions came from miners' “lodges” (associations), often created by members of the Methodist Church (a branch of Protestantism). From the 1950s, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was an essential interlocutor of those in power; its calls for strikes paralyzed the country in 1972 or 1974.
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Source: Lemonde
