A decade of decline for UK coal

In August 2014, West Cumbria Mining announced the completion of a £14.7m private equity financing for its Whitehaven Coking Coal Project – later known as Woodhouse Colliery. The project began as a venture to explore for high-quality coking coal under the sea off the coast of Whitehaven, Cumbria.

Inferred resources dated to 2013 suggested that the mine could produce over 3Mt of coal per year from a 77-square-mile coalface under the sea. Advocates of mining the site have touted its ability to reduce the UK’s reliance on imported coal – in 2019, the UK imported 6.8Mt of coal.

Mark Kirkbride, CEO of West Cumbria Mining, said on completion of the financing: “The company is delighted to announce the completion of financing for its Whitehaven Coking Coal Project. This is testament to the strong fundamentals of the project and the potential for this to become the next substantial, low cost, metallurgical coal mining operation in the UK.”

The project would be England’s first deep coal mine since 1987.

UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd announced that the UK would close all its coal-fired power plants by 2025, with proposals to replace coal power generation with gas and nuclear plants. The announcement came less than two weeks before the start of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which negotiated the Paris Agreement.

It followed a number of policy decisions dating back several years – the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008 put into law the government’s commitment to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and in 2009 the government mandated that new coal power plants be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology. The profitability of coal-fired power plants had been inhibited by government policy, but Rudd’s announcement essentially tolled the death knell for the creation of new coal plants.

“The coal from Kellingley will flow like a black river - for the rest of this century, and beyond,” said a promotional video for North Yorkshire’s Kellingley Colliery, which opened in 1965. That didn’t quite pan out, the mine was closed at the end of 2015 and capped off three months later.

The closure of Kellingley marked the end of deep coal mining in the UK. The colliery’s operator, UK Coal, had proposed a three-year extension to operations at Kellingley and a similar extension at Thoresby Colliery in Nottinghamshire. However, Minister for Business and Enterprise Matt Hancock said that the £338m required to extend both collieries “does not represent value for money”. Both closures represented the loss of around 1,300 coal mining jobs.

Coal mining in the UK had been struggling for some time as it became more economical for coal-fired power stations to import coal from abroad.

Britain achieved its first ever full day without burning coal to generate power since the first coal-powered generator was switched on in the 1880s. The fuel’s use in power generation had already been rapidly declining as other power sources increased their share of the country’s energy mix, and Britain’s previous record for the longest continuous period without coal was 19 hours, which was achieved in May 2016.

National Grid UK system operator Cordi O'Hara described the achievement as "a watershed moment in how our energy system is changing".

Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the government had bound by law its target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, becoming the first G7 country to legislate a target of that scale. The legislation overruled the prior target to reduce emissions 80% by the same year.

“As the first country to legislate for long-term climate targets, we can be truly proud of our record in tackling climate change,” said May. “We have made huge progress in growing our economy and the jobs market while slashing emissions – now is the time to go further and faster to safeguard the environment for our children.

“This country led the world in innovation during the industrial revolution, and now we must lead the world to a cleaner, greener form of growth.”

British power company Drax announced that almost half a century of power generation using coal at its North Yorkshire power station would end in 2021, four years ahead of the UK’s 2025 deadline for phasing out coal power.

“Ending the use of coal at Drax is a landmark in our continued efforts to transform the business and become a world-leading carbon negative company by 2030. Drax’s journey away from coal began some years ago and I’m proud to say we’re going to finish the job well ahead of the government’s 2025 deadline,” said Drax CEO Will Gardiner in a statement.

Britain marked two months without burning coal to generate power – a decade prior, coal formed 40% of the UK’s electricity generation. Part of this two month stint came from a drop in electricity demand due to nationwide lockdown measures implemented to suppress Covid-19, but also the longer term rise in renewables. As of June 2020, renewables had been responsible for 37% of electricity supplied to the grid compared to 35% for all fossil fuels.

Following the closure of Kellingley Colliery in 2015, almost all the coal mines remaining in the UK were surface mines. The Bradley mine in Durham only began production in 2018, when mine operator Banks Group began extracting 550,000 tonnes of coal.

In late 2019, Banks Group submitted a planning application to extend the site, but after this was rejected by Durham County Council, the company decided to close the mine. Banks extracted around 340,000 of its targeted 500,000 tonnes of coal.

The closure of Bradley leaves only the Hartington mine in Derbyshire as the last surface mine in England, though there are plans for Hartington to be closed too.