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UK coal plants must close by 2025, Energy Secretary to announce

Britain will stop burning coal for electricity within a decade and build a new fleet of gas power plants to keep the lights on, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd is expected to announce today.

Unveiling a new energy strategy, Ms Rudd will say it is “perverse” that coal, the “dirtiest fossil fuel” is still such a major part of the UK’s energy system – providing 29pc of the UK’s electricity last year.

It is understood she will announce that the country’s dozen remaining coal-fired power stations must all close by 2025 at the latest.

“It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the UK to be relying on polluting, carbon-intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations. Let me be clear: this is not the future,” she will say.

Ms Rudd will say the ageing coal plants are also becoming increasingly unreliable, highlighting breakdowns which forced National Grid to impose emergency measures earlier this month.

In their place, she will say Britain must build a new generation of power plants that burn gas – which is significantly more environmentally-friendly than coal.

One of the greatest and most cost-effective contributions we can make to emission reductions in electricity is by replacing coal-fired power stations with gas,” she will say.

“Gas is central to our energy secure future. In the next 10 years, it’s imperative that we get new gas-fired power stations built.”

She will also back more new nuclear plants, describing the technology as “central to our energy secure future”.

A series of major coal-fired power plants have shut in recent years because of environmental regulations to prevent acid rain, but the dozen that remain have a combined capacity of almost 19 gigawatts (GW), according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Of these, three have announced they plan to close by the end of March, while a fourth will partially close, together removing about 5.5 GW from the system.

DECC already forecasts a declining role for the remaining plants, estimating that coal could provide just 1pc of UK power in 2025 because of a combination of tightening air quality ruled and carbon taxes.

However, until now there has been no fixed closure date and experts had suggested that coal may in fact continue to play a much bigger role for much longer, especially in the absence of new gas plants and if the Treasury fails to increase the UK’s carbon tax, which it has already frozen.

Some of the remaining coal plants could potentially evade the closure date by converting to burn renewable biomass instead, as Drax has partially done. However, ministers have moved to curb the subsidies available for biomass.

Another option could be to fit carbon capture and storage technology, but this is also expected to require subsidies.

Despite political support for new gas plants, and subsidies on offer through a scheme called the "capacity market", investment has ground to a halt and many existing plants have been mothballed because they are losing money.

 The only proposed new gas plant that was due to be built under the capacity market, Trafford, is in doubt after developers failing to secure investment.

It is hoped that announcing a coal closure date will send a signal to investors that will spur investment in new gas power plants.

Environmental group Greenpeace said it would welcome a move away from coal, but criticised a new “dash for gas” which it said would “lock in more dirty power than we actually need”, arguing ministers should support renewables instead.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk