Coal Weakens, but Still Dominates U.K. Electricity

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The use of coal in the U.K.'s electricity mix continued to drop in recent months, but it still managed to retain a commanding lead over gas, nuclear and renewable energy.

Coal provided 34.7% of electricity generation by major power producers, with gas supplying 25.1% and nuclear at 20.9%, for the three-month period of December 2014 through February 2015. For the same period in 2014, coal accounted for 37%, gas for 23% and nuclear for 18%.

The figures, which were released last week by the U.K. Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), stated that lower coal-fired power generation was due to the closure of plants. Last year saw a number of outages at several power stations, the closure of Uskmouth power plant and the partial closure of Ferrybridge C. There also was the conversion of a second unit of the Drax plant to biomass--the U.K.'s largest coal-fired plant.

Overall, the U.K. saw lower demand for generation and changes in the relative prices of coal and gas, with gas prices falling.

The falling use of coal in power generation was reflected in the country's weakening coal-mining sector. Total demand for coal in 2014 was 48.1 million tonnes, 20% lower than in 2013, with consumption by electricity generators down 23% (-11.6 million tonnes) to a record low of 38.4 million tonnes. Electricity generators accounted for 80% of total coal use in 2014, compared with 83% in 2013.

Provisional figures for 2014, as a whole, show that domestic coal production was down 10% down from 2013 at 11.5 million tonnes. Deep mined production was down 9.9% at 3.7 million tonnes--a record low. Surface mine production was down by 8.6% at 7.8 million tonnes, also a record low. No slurry was produced in 2014.

For the period of December through February, DECC highlighted the improved fortunes of nuclear power, which saw a rise of 5.1%, due to stations returning to operation after outages. Last year, EDF Energy (London, England) shut two reactors at Hartlepool and one at Heysham 1, after a fault was discovered at a boiler spine at Unit 1 of its Heysham 1 nuclear power plant in Lancashire, England. They were returned to service in late November. For additional information, see November 28, 2014, article - Three U.K. Reactors Back Online.

Wind generation by power utilities was up for the three months by 1.2%, while overall renewables generation rose 13.4%, with notable growth from the biomass sector. The share of low carbon generation--renewables plus nuclear--rose 3.3 percentage points to 40.2%.

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