British Coal Consumption Collapses as Natural Gas Takes Over

Britain has gone 24 hours without using coal-fired energy for the first time since the height of the Industrial Revolution in the late XIX century.

National energy grid data for the United Kingdom released this week has shown that coal consumption has collapsed as a source of energy, falling from 42 percent of consumption in 2012 to just 7 percent by the end of 2017, as Britain seeks to transition to cleaner forms of fuel.

According to the data, April 21 2018 was the first day since the year 1880, when Britain was in its industrial golden age, that no energy derived from coal was used to power the country.

In January, the British government published its implementation plan to shut down all the country's coal-fired power plants that do not have access to carbon capture and storage facilities by the year 2025. The plan is based on input from nearly 6,000 businesses and public entities.

Natural gas meanwhile has increased its share of British energy consumption from just 27 percent in 2012 to 45 percent in 2017.

The use of coal has been in decline in Britain for over half a century, when the Clean Air Act of 1953 was enacted by Parliament to deal with recurrent smog clouds that blanketed the capital London and caused thousands of deaths.