Coal Not Cold

The energy crisis calls for pragmatic solutions to keep us warm and the lights on.

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This week’s article is adapted from a section of a new paper by the new think tank the Great British Business Council. I am a co-author of the paper, although it should be noted that Catherine McBride did most of the work. The new paper shows how Net Zero has resulted in Premeditated Industrial Destruction and what to do about it. The paper is recommended Easter reading and can be found on this link.

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Introduction

The UK closed its last coal-fired power station at Radcliffe-on-Soar in 2024. This closure marked the end of a series of closures marked by politicians blowing up other coal-fired power stations to celebrate publicly their compliance with the Net Zero agenda.

Figure 1 - Virtue Signaling Alok Sharma Blowing Up Ferrybridge Coal Power Station

Now Germany is considering reopening some of its coal-fired power stations in response to the energy crisis caused by the war with Iran. Many other countries such as India, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines, Vietnam and Bangladesh are stepping up generation of coal-fired power to offset gas shortages created by the conflict.

Emissions of SOx, NOx and particulates have always been more powerful arguments for reducing coal use than carbon dioxide emissions, but new super-critical power plants scrub their emissions very effectively. Time to explore whether the UK should be reopening coal mines and rebuilding coal-fired power stations to keep the lights on. Should we focus on Coal Not Cold?

Coal Reserves

The UK has a lot of coal. The data on coal reserves and resources is quite old, but the coal has not gone anywhere. Euracoal estimated in 2015 that the UK was sitting on 3,560 million tonnes of hard coal resources and a further 1,000Mt of lignite. They also estimated that the UK had 277Mt of economically recoverable hard coal reserves.

We only have one remaining large-scale coal mine, Aberpergwm in South Wales, not far from Port Talbot. Coal prices have risen from around $42/t in 2016 to over $144/t at the time of writing, so it may be economically feasible to restart old mines and extract more domestic coal.

What are the benefits of restarting coal mining and coal-fired electricity generation?

Fuel Diversification

First is diversification of fuel supplies. The war with Iran and the consequent restrictions on the flow of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz has highlighted the fragility of global supply chains. Prior to the war, about one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) flowed through that critical global chokepoint. Constraints on supply have pushed up gas prices. The blowing up of the Nordstream pipeline and the war in Ukraine have also constrained the flow of pipeline gas to Europe from Russia. Diversification of fuel supplies is becoming of critical importance, which is why we are seeing many countries increase their coal consumption.

Having a fleet of coal power stations alongside gas-fired generation would encourage price arbitrage to keep electricity prices low and reduce reliance on gas with a reliable energy source.

Coal can also be used to produce liquid fuels. For example, China uses about 400Mt of coal annually in the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce petrochemicals and liquid fuels such as petrol and diesel. This diversifies China’s fuel supplies and reduces its reliance on oil imports, particularly important at a time of constrained oil supplies. With a change of regulatory regime, the UK’s vast coal resources could potentially be used to offset oil and refined product imports.

Energy Security

Diversification of fuel supplies also leads to stronger energy security. One of the problems of intermittent renewables is that sometimes they produce more electricity than demand and at other times they produce almost nothing. This problem can be partially solved by adding battery storage. However, such storage is extremely expensive and is useless in the face of extended calm periods.

The UK has comparatively little gas storage capacity, about 3.2 billion cubic metres (about 35TWh), representing just over a week’s worth during winter. Extra short-term storage can be made available by line-packing – increasing pipeline pressure – but increasing long term storage is expensive and time consuming. By contrast, coal can be stored in stockpiles near the power plant very cheaply and does not need to rely on long and fragile global supply chains – homegrown, secure energy.

Keeping the Lights On

The case for reopening coal mines and restarting or rebuilding UK coal-fired generation capacity is made stronger when the state of our electricity generation system is considered. Our gas fleet is ageing and of course the last coal power plant was turned off in 2024. The typical operational life for a gas plant is 25–30 years. With careful maintenance, lives could possibly be extended up to 40 years. However, intermittent operation can reduce component life again. Using plant data from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) and assuming a 35-year life for our gas fleet, we can see in Figure 2 that firm power capacity starts to fall rapidly in 2028 and by 2035 is down to just 25.5GW (or 28.8GW if Hinkley Point C is online by then).

Figure 2 - Dwindling Firm Power Capacity (GW)

NESO expects both total electricity demand and peak demand to rise over the period to 2030 and beyond. We will become increasingly reliant on intermittent renewables and on dark, cold and calm winter evenings the output from wind and solar can fall to almost zero. This means we will need firm power capacity available to meet the shortfall.

As Figure 2 shows, will become increasingly short of firm power capacity and it is therefore critical that new firm capacity is built quickly. One answer might be to build new gas-fired generators. However, there is an eight-year lead time on new gas-fired power plants meaning that if we started building today we would not get new capacity online until 2034. This leaves coal as a viable alternative because it should be possible to build quicker, with construction times in China as low as 20 months. It is becoming inevitable that we will need new coal-fired electricity generation capacity to keep the lights on.

Cheap and Reliable Power

The UK has the most expensive industrial electricity prices in the developed world. One of the reasons is we have spent hundreds of billions of pounds on intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power. It is of critical importance that we bring down electricity prices. One of the reasons why China is so competitive is that coal is the backbone of its electricity generation. Coal-fired generation is cheap – cheaper than gas and intermittent renewables – if carbon costs through the Emissions Trading Scheme and Carbon Price Support mechanism are removed.

Coal-fired generation is also reliable and flexible. Coal-fired power plants are not subject to the vagaries of the weather which is why most coal is generally used as constant baseload power. However, newer plants can operate at lower minimum loads and can flex up and down in response to changes in demand and changes in the output of intermittent renewables.

Overcoming Objections

The main objections to new coal power plants relate to emissions. If CO₂ emissions are discounted due to the US removal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding that leaves real pollutants such as particulates, SOx and NOx to deal with. Fortunately, modern super-critical (SC) and ultra-super-critical (USC) plants in China have proven highly effective at removing these pollutants.

First SC and USC plants operate at higher thermal efficiency levels than conventional plants thus reducing coal use and raw pollutant generation per MWh of electricity produced. Studies have shown that modern Ultra Low Emissions plants in China remove over 99.9% of all particulate matter and over 99.8% of PM2.5 particulates. Other studies show sulphur dioxide removal rates of 97.8-99.7% in high-efficiency, low-emissions power plants in China. NOx removal efficiencies of 90% can also be achieved.

If the problems of particulate, SOx and NOx emissions can be overcome, then there is no real objection remaining to using coal-fired power.

Conclusions

Recent geo-political events in Ukraine and the Middle East demonstrate the fragility of global supply chains and the paramount importance of energy security. Successive government have phased out coal-fired generation and closed coal mines in pursuit of Net Zero. The benefits of coal-fired power plants are obvious and the downsides of coal have been largely eliminated through technological enhancements. The case for coal is becoming increasingly hard to ignore and many people would surely prefer we use coal rather than be left cold and shivering in their homes. Coal not Cold.

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