UK’s Last Coal-Fired Power Station to Close

The UK’s last coal-fired power station will close on September 30, ending the country’s 142-year history of using coal to make electricity.
Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station near Nottingham has been the last station of its kind in this country since September 2023, when Northern Ireland’s Kilroot power station was closed.
It is being shut down in line with government policy to end coal-fired power generation, as the country moves towards its goal of net zero emissions from electricity generation by 2030.
Its closure means that the UK will be the first country in the G7 to have phased out coal for electricity production entirely.
Around 400 jobs are expected to be lost, sparking criticism from one of the UK’s largest labour unions, Unite, which called the closure “an act of industrial vandalism.”
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said Grangemouth’s workforce had been let down by Petroineos and the governments in Westminster and Holyrood, saying they had “failed to guarantee production until alternative jobs are in place.”
The government and the steel giant had agreed to a combined £1.25 billion in support, including redundancy and training packages in exchange for, among other commitments, retaining 5,000 jobs across the UK.
However, 2,800 people will lose their jobs at the plant when the last blast furnace is closed, because the electric arc system set to replace it will take years to construct and when it is completed, will need fewer workers.
While this deal was agreed on by trade unions, not all leaders were happy with the drive to reduce carbon emissions coming at the price of British jobs.
Gary Smith, leader of the GMB union, said: “We really have to stop this decarbonisation through de-industrialisation. Serving up P45s to working-class people, hollowing out working-class communities, is not the way to decarbonise this country.”
He added: “There’s been a lot of talk about the transition to net zero, but the wind farms all around the coast are invariably built in China and Indonesia. Anywhere but the UK and they’re certainly not being built with UK components.”
Smith called for an “honest debate” on how environment policy is impacting jobs, “because it’s costing us jobs.”