The United Kingdom power grid has passed another major clean power milestone, completing a second consecutive month without the use of coal power.
The UK grid milestone extends the longest period the country has operated without a coal-fired power plant since the Industrial Revolution.
As the record clicked over the coal-free run stood at 61 days and six hours.
The British environmental news website BusinessGreen reports the record-breaking run has been delivered in part thanks to the coronavirus lockdown, which led to lower than expected power demand throughout the Spring.
However, the latest coal-free record builds on a trend that has seen the grid operate for long periods with little or no coal power in recent years, as renewable energy and storage capacity has surged and coal plants have been shuttered.
Jess Ralston, analyst at think tank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said the latest record-breaking coal-free run highlighted “the fact that the fuel is simply not needed in a modern energy system”.
“At the same time, the surge in renewable generation and extensive plans to expand the nation’s fleet of cheap and clean energy sources show that there will only be one direction from here,” she added. “
“Recent tests of an increasingly flexible energy system during sunny bank holidays in lockdown, all of which have been dealt with without issue, show that the grid is ready to move quicker than many thought possible.
“The question is now whether policymakers keep pace with this to encourage further investment into clean energy sources.”
BusinessGreen reports the latest coal-free run could continue for some time yet and over the course of the year coal is expected to provide only a fraction of the grid’s power, following the closure of two further coal power plants this year.
With wind and solar power performing strongly, new data from Carbon Brief suggests that to date renewable energy has provided more power than fossil fuels to the grid this year.
Renewables are thought to have been responsible for 37 per cent of electricity supplied to the network compared to 35 per cent for coal and gas. Nuclear accounted for around 18 per cent and imports around 10 per cent, according to the website.
“So far this year renewable energy has generated more electricity than fossil fuels and that’s never happened before,” Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans told the BBC.
“With gas also in decline, there’s a real chance that renewable energy will overtake fossil fuels in 2020 as a whole.”
The dominance of renewable energy and the decline of coal underlines a remarkable transformation to the UK’s power grid in recent years.
Attention is now turning to how to further boost the UK’s clean power capacity and start to slash the use of gas power in pursuit of the country’s target to become a net zero emission economy by 2050.
Calls are growing for the Conservative government to deliver more clean power auctions as part of its imminent green recovery package, so as to accelerate the roll out of low cost renewable energy projects.
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