AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Here's a sound you will not hear again.
(SOUNDBITE OF TURBINES ROARING)
CHANG: That is the sound of turbines at Britain's last coal-fired power plant, about 100 miles north of London. Last night, those turbines shut off forever, making Britain, the country that first harnessed coal power back in the 19th century, the first now to wean itself off that dirty fuel. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: For Helen Griffiths, the towers of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station are like a beacon signaling she's home.
HELEN GRIFFITHS: The billowing steam - and when you come into the local airport it would just be a real landmark - that you would just see the power station as you came in.
FRAYER: This is one of the main arteries through the English Midlands, once an industrial heartland. I'm looking out at eight giant, stout, 12-story-high, cement cooling towers. In its heyday, this plant burned 20 trainloads of coal a day, enough to power 2 million homes. Michael Lewis was inside when they shut off the turbines.
MICHAEL LEWIS: There were a few tears. It was a very emotional time, you know? The longest-serving employee has been here for 47 years.
FRAYER: Lewis is the CEO of Uniper, a German company that runs this plant and is decarbonizing its portfolio.
LEWIS: We need to get off coal. We need to address the climate change targets. But at the same time, it's the end of an era.
FRAYER: An era that began with Britain's first coal-fired power plant in 1882.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Remember; coal gives us the heat, light and power to build a...
FRAYER: Coal power fueled the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of empire. By the mid-20th century, almost all of the U.K.'s electricity came from coal, and London had what they called pea soup air, green toxic haze. That health emergency began to change the economics of coal, says energy analyst Sepi Golzari-Munro.
SEPI GOLZARI-MUNRO: First in the 1950s, when the smog was killing thousands of people in London and the clean air laws came in. And then from the 1990s, relatively cleaner and cheaper gas was edging coal out. And now we see that transition happening again.
FRAYER: The discovery of North Sea gas in the 1960s and subsequent investment in offshore wind have made it possible for this country to eliminate coal power completely. Bryony Worthington is an environmental campaigner-turned-baroness in the House of Lords who helped write seminal laws creating carbon reduction targets.
BRYONY WORTHINGTON: Laws that restrict the amount of particulate matter old coal stations are allowed to emit - there are other laws that restrict new coal stations from being built. There's a tax that asks the coal stations to pay for the climate pollution that they cause.
FRAYER: Now, coal may still be plentiful underground here, but it's no longer economical to mine or burn it.
(CROSSTALK)
FRAYER: At a pub not far from the Ratcliffe smokestacks, former workers raise a pint to the past. But the nostalgia only goes so far for 71-year-old Simon Humble.
SIMON HUMBLE: Well, it's good it's closing down because when I worked there, even after a shower, you'd sneeze, and it was all the coal dust coming out your nose.
FRAYER: Reminding us that, even as this country's last coal plant is decommissioned, its carbon emissions are likely to remain in the atmosphere for decades or centuries. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, England.
(SOUNDBITE OF TODD TERJE'S "PREBEN GOES TO ACAPULCO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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