The British government has launched a consultation on bringing forward the deadline for phasing out coal from the country’s energy system by one year, from October 2025 to 1 October 2024. In January 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 the domestic coal-fired power generation facilities would be set from October 2025 onwards 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 less than 9 GW in 2019. Drax intends to stop using coal at its 3,960 GW Drax coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire (UKm) 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. This shutdown is in line with Drax's December 2019 strategy to become carbon negative by 2030 by bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) at its power plants.
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