Corporate DispatchPro
The canary leaves the coal mine In early 1882, Holborn Circus in central London came alight with a burst of electricity generated by a newly-built facility nearby. The Holborn Viaduct power station became the world’s first coal-fired power plant to produce electricity for public consumption. The power station itself closed down after only three years, but coalfired plants quickly mushroomed all over the UK and its colonies, Europe, and the US. Even before electricity production, coal had already emerged as the crucial resource to power a new generation of steam engines that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution. The carbon-rich material quickly became a major commodity and a prized material in the period of the great wars in the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, the international collaboration that developed into the European Union, was founded on the creation of a common market for coal and steel. Today, coal’s dominance in the west has subsided significantly as environmental concerns grow stronger and cheaper alternatives become more widely available. OECD countries registered a net decline of 68 gigawatts of coal power capacity since the start of the millennium, and EU members retired 62 plants since 2016 according to a live monitoring project by Europe Beyond Coal. The bloc has 312 coal-fired power stations generating a combined 126 megawatts while Greece and Poland are each planning to add a new facility. However, lack of funding and – in the case of Greece – a set timeline for the phasing out of coal use are putting these projects in doubt. At a global scale, the rate of planned coal-powered capacity dropped by two-thirds since 2015. But the coal fleet remains in a state of
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