Coal news and updates

As coal-fired power stations across the country shut, ports have been hit by a sharp drop in imports of a vital ingredient for that industry.

“We’ve talked for a number of years about a life after coal,” says Gary Hodgson, chief operating officer of Peel Ports, one of the UK’s biggest ports groups. “But the speed of decline has been more rapid than most people thought.”

At the Port of Tyne — located on a river that has shipped coal since the 14th century — coal imports are expected to dive from a record 5m tonnes in 2013 to zero this year. The ironic phrase “taking coals to Newcastle”, coined when exports were the norm, may soon itself be consigned to history. The reduction has been dramatic, says Andrew Moffat, chief executive. So too was the impact on the port’s 2015 turnover, which shrank from £72m to £59m.

Coal has been a vital fuel for the UK’s power stations since the first one opened in London in 1882. In recent decades, imports have been boosted by the contraction of UK coal mining and the need for low sulphur coal to meet rising environmental standards.

But last month a historic “zero coal” milestone was reached when on seven separate occasions in one week Britain was powered without any coal-power station burning. As a consequence imports of coal to the UK are plummeting.

The imports, which are primarily for power stations, peaked in 2006 at 54m tonnes and in 2014 they comprised 42m tonnes of the total 325m tonnes of imports handled that year by UK ports.

Contraction has been sudden. David Whitehead, director of the British Ports Association, says: “It’s a really fundamental readjustment in the market. In mid-2015 it really started to kick in. It’s the market catching up with government policy.”

National figures for 2015 are not yet available but the trend is clear. At the Port of Bristol, coal imports shrank from nearly 4.5m in 2014 to 1m in 2015. It expects 500,000 tonnes this year.

Peel Ports’ coal import volumes through Hunterston, which served the recently closed Longannet power station in Scotland, and Liverpool have dropped from 9.4m to 2.4m 

Source: next.ft.