Great Britain went a record 55 hours without using coal

Coal-fired power plants were absent from Britain’s energy mix for more than two days straight this week, in a latest sign that the days of using coal are well and truly numbered.

Data from the National Grid, a private company, has shown that no coal was used in electricity generation in Great Britain between 10:25 pm on Monday until 5:10 am on Thursday.

This does not include Northern Ireland, whose energy usage is recorded within the island of Ireland.

By coincidence, it was also late April last year when Britain first went a full 24 hours without using coal, a feat not achieved since the Industrial Revolution. This was followed by another 40-hour period in October.

In total, coal’s contribution to Britain’s electricity mix has taken a short, sharp fall in recent years. According to data compiled by the Carbon Brief website, coal use has declined by 75 percent between 2014 and 2017, leading to a historical low of 5.3 percent of energy consumption last year.

The drop-off has been led by multiple aging plants coming offline and the UK’s carbon price, which makes the economic case for running coal much harder. Falling usage has been one of the primary drivers behind the UK’s declining carbon emissions, falling by 12 percent in 2017.

The UK government has also made a commitment to phase-out all unabated coal plants by 2025, which has sent a clear signal for investors to get out of this market. On current trends this target could achieved well before the 2020s though.

“The UK benefits from highly diverse and flexible sources of electricity and our energy mix continues to change,” Fintan Slye, the National Grid’s director of UK systems operations, told The Independent newspaper.

“However, it’s important to remember coal is still an important source of energy as we transition to a low carbon system”. Thermal plants, such as coal, are now being used just for peak periods of energy demand, such as the winter months.

                  National Grid tweeted out the record-breaking news on Thursday morning