The UK government has officially brought forward the deadline for phasing out coal in power generation by one year to October 2024. In 2018, the British Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) unveiled a phase-out plan for its eight-remaining coal-fired power plants; an emission limit of up to 450 g/kWh for coal-fired power plants would be set from 2025 so that "unabated" coal-fired plants (i.e., not equipped with carbon capture technologies) will be forced to close.
The coal- and lignite-fired power capacity in the United Kingdom has been falling since 1990, from more than 40 GW in 1990 to 20 GW in 2015 and 7.2 GW in 2020. Drax stopped using coal at its 3,960 GW Drax coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire (UK) in March 2021. However, the group will ensure the availability of its two remaining coal-fired units until September 2022, when its existing Capacity Market agreements terminate.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.