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G7 countries agree to shut all their coal power plants within the next 10 years
(theprogressplaybook.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Can't wait to see the articles in 10 years about how major countries are phasing out coal in the next 10-20 years.
Again.
Between 2012 and 2022 electricity generation from coal has gone down from 2400TWh to 1427TWh for the G7. Most of that comes down to the US, Japan and Germany in that order.The UK and France have basicaly no coal left, besides some rarely running plants and Italy and Canada do exit coal a bit slowler, but do not have too much left anymore.
To look a bit closer. The US has the inflation reduction act and is building out renewables at record pace, while gas is killing coal in most places. The speed in decline is rather rapid. Japan has closed down its nuclear power plants after Fukushima, but is restarting them about now, so a decline in coal consumption is possible. Germany did phase out all its nuclear power plants until last year, but still managed to have a decline in coal electricity generation, due to building out renewables fairly quickly. This means that should go even faster.
So yeah, this might happen. Japan is the one to watch though. It really does not built much clean energy these days.
Lots of coal in the UK
Over the past year coal has only generated 1.2% of power in the UK
We mine and export as well as a large internal household market. Still lots of coal unfortunately, we may have stopped using it for power generation but it's still being used.
Looks like there's one mine left operating at any real capacity. ~100,000 tonnes a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mines_in_the_United_Kingdom#21st_century
Much of that mine's output is apparently ground down for carbon filters, although it used to be used at a nearby steelworks that I think is now shut.
Domestic use of coal is pretty rare, most people not using gas or electric are using wood burners.
What?
There's Ratcliffe-on-Soar and that doesn't run all the time, and very rarely at anything approaching full power. It's closing for good later this year.