Fiddlers Ferry coal-fired power station in Warrington, Cheshire. One of the stations coal powers units is scheduled to close later this year. Image source: Scottish and Southern Electric
The UK has gone a full week without burning coal to generate electricity. This is the first time since the launch of the nation's first coal power station in 1882.
The achievement was announced by the National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO) in a tweet on Wednesday.
The coal-free week ran from 13:24 BST on Wednesday, May 1 to 13:24 BST on Wednesday May 8.
The director of NGESO, Fintan Slye, said: "As more and more renewables come onto our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to be a regular occurrence. We believe that by 2025 we will be able to fully operate Great Britain’s electricity system with zero carbon."
NGESO said that the UK had generated energy from a variety of other sources: natural gas (46%); nuclear (21.2%); wind (10.7%); imports (9.9%); biomass (6%); solar (5%) and hydro (1.1%).
The UK government has made a pledge to have phased out the use of coal for energy by 2025. According to NGO, Climate Action Network Europe, if it manages to do this the country will join seven other EU member states who have already phased out coal energy: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, and Belgium.
The NGO has also listed a further nine EU countries that have pledged to end the burning of coal by 2030; Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, France, Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Germany has plans to completely end the use of coal by 2038. In a ceremony largely symbolic of this, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier received the country's 'last piece of black coal' last month. Nonetheless, the issue is still a contentious one in Germany and black coal is just one type of coal that accounts for 35% of German energy.
In Spain, discussions over the phasing out of coal remain ongoing, but no commitments have yet been made.
Eastern members are far more likely to be without any plan for the phasing out of coal. Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Greece are all without any formal plans of action.
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