Europe’s coal phase-out

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll have seen me harping on about the UK’s falling emissions. This isn’t out of misplaced optimism or some kind of climate patriotism. It’s because if we want to fix something, we have to know what works. When we find a climate solution that’s effective, we need to notice and do more of it. And in the UK, the biggest difference has been the phase out of coal.

A decade ago, as much as 40% of the UK’s electricity generation was from coal and less than 10% came from renewable sources. Today renewables are not far off 40% and coal is gone entirely. Moving beyond coal is the single most effective national policy for reducing emissions. To prevent further climate disaster, everyone needs to do it as fast as possible.

And here’s the good news: the UK isn’t the only place where it’s working. Several other countries in the EU have either eliminated coal altogether or will have done so by 2030. Belgium got there first. Ireland are the most recent, crossing the zero coal line a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a map from Beyond Fossil Fuels:

There are some laggards on this map. You’ll notice that the countries with slow or no plans to phase out coal correlates rather neatly with the list of coal producing nations in Europe. As we’ve seen repeatedly in Germany, the jobs and lobbying power of the coal industry is a powerful dragging anchor on the energy transition. It’s not insurmountable – see Hungary or Slovakia, who have supported coal regions in a planned and gradual shift.

For those committed to the whataboutery, yes, China is still building coal power plants. However, it is using these to meet peak demand alongside a world-leading build-out of renewable energy. Chinese coal plants only run 50% of the time, down from 70% not long ago. Their emissions may well have peaked – more on that if proven so. China met its 2030 target for renewable energy six years early, and China already has just transition programmes to support coal miners out of the industry.

America then? The Trump claims to dig coal, though he is clearly a man who has never dug anything in his life and isn’t going to be able to prevent the decline of coal in the USA. The economics are not on coal’s side, and coal power has fallen from over 50% of electricity to below 20% in the last quarter century.

Elsewhere, the Powering Past Coal Alliance has members on every continent, both at the national and regional level.

Challenges remain, don’t get me wrong. It’s particularly difficult in countries where energy demand is still rising, with India perhaps the most challenging context. Other places, such as Chile, have proved that you can phase out coal while demand is still rising. And that’s the benefit of highlighting just how many countries are successfully moving past coal in their power mix. The more countries manage it, the greater the bank of experience we can call upon for strategies that worked, and the more learning there is to draw on for those still using a lot of coal.