UK Coal Plant Phased Out By 2025; Country Switching To Nuclear And Gas-Powered Providers?

Amber Rudd, British Energy Secretary has proposed to shut all of the U.K.'s coal-burning plants by 2025 and restrict their use by 2023, CBC reported.

In the event that the U.K. is successful in shutting its coal plants by that due date, it will be the first significant nation to do as such.

"The country will look to nuclear and natural gas-fired power plants to complement intermittent renewable energy," Rudd said BBC cited.

"It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the U.K. to be relying on polluting, carbon-intensive 50 year old coal-fired power stations," she continued.

Drax Group, operator of coal and biomass-fired power plants, could see the remaining coal units close two years earlier if the government sticks to the 2025 closure date, analyst at Jefferies said according to Reuters. 

"Excellent and inspiring precedent", Al Gore, former US Vice President and an active campaigner for clean energy, said of the announcement.

If coal power plants can introduce carbon catch and capacity before 2025, they would not be shut.

Carbon catch and capacity (CCS) has long been mooted as the response to cleaning up coal plant, however almost no advancement has been made in developing the technology, with only one commercial scale plant working on the planet.

"Phasing out coal is essential for the climate. But switching from coal to gas is like an alcoholic switching from two bottles of whiskey a day to two bottles of port," said Simon Bullock, senior energy campaigner of Friends of the Earth.

World leaders will gather in Paris this month for U.N. negotiations to seek an accord to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Reuters said. 

"We should be doing more to encourage gas, for example by taking into account emissions when carving up subsidies in the capacity mechanism,"  said one of the large power utilities chief executive, as reported by the Financial Times.