The switchover is coming closer

At the end of this month, something momentous but largely unheralded will happen in the East Midlands: the closure of the last coal-fired power station in the UK.

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, just under 10 miles south of Nottingham, will shut down for the final time on September 30, marking an end to coal’s role in the country's energy supply.

While this takes place 150 miles south of the region, it will still have resonance in the North East.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. Image credit: arup

The region’s last deep coal mine may have closed in 2005, but mining’s history still runs deep here and with little wonder - at its peak in 1913, coal mining employed almost 250,000 men, producing over 56 million tons of coal every year from about 400 pits. Even in 1990, when pit numbers in the North-East had dwindled to six, coals still supplied 80% of the country’s electricity.

But aside from history, there’s another reason why the formal end to coal’s role in the energy supply industry will be worthy of note in the North-East: what is replacing the fossil fuel in the UK’s energy mix.

Last year, while gas-fired power stations still accounted for the largest share of the country’s electricity production at 34.7%, wind and solar energy is rapidly catching up, accounting for 32.8% of all electricity produced, with bioenergy at 11.6% and nuclear at 13.8%.

As the Government aims to decarbonise energy production by 2030, renewable energy is set to overtake gas-fired power generation within a few short years.

The march towards more renewables was boosted earlier in September when a record 131 clean energy projects won state subsidy contracts in this year’s auction round.

The projects could provide electricity to the equivalent of 11 million homes.

The government said it was the “biggest round ever” with a total of 9.6 gigawatts of projects winning state guarantees on their electricity price.

While this includes more than 5GW of offshore wind projects, the Government is still short of its target of quadrupling offshore wind capacity by 2030 so further subsidy contracts can be expected in the near future.

So, what does all this mean for the North East?

Well, in many ways the region which powered the nation in the days of Peak Coal is performing the same role when it comes to renewable energy.

Estimates vary on the number of people working in the renewable energy sector in the region from a conservative 7,600 according to a 2020 survey to somewhere around 57,000 in the wider advanced manufacturing and engineering industry.

What is not at issue is the fact that North East England is a global leader in offshore renewables and the sector continues to grow and attract new businesses.

The region is around 140km from the UK’s largest planned offshore wind farm at Dogger Bank, making it a perfect location for offshore wind manufacturers and component supply chain to take advantage of the opportunities in this market.

Many companies are already doing that. Equinor and SSE Renewables have opened their operations and maintenance (O&M) base at Port of Tyne, South Shields, to support the work at Dogger Bank while JDR Cables are building a new subsea cable manufacturing facility at Blyth.

And in one of the most significant developments in the region’s offshore renewable sector for many years, SeAH Wind is currently building a giant factory at the Teesworks development on the south bank of the River Tees.

SeAH Wind factory - Image credit: Teesworks

Once operational, the half-mile long production facility will make giant monopiles – the building blocks which form the foundations of offshore wind farms.

Despite the size and significance of this development – the largest monopile factory in Europe – SeAH Wind is just one piece in a jigsaw of clean energy developments on the 2,500-acre Teesworks site.

Net Zero Teesside is planned to be the UK’s first carbon capture, utilisation and storage facility, capturing up to 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Based at Teesworks and in partnership with local industry and world-class partners, Net Zero Teesside aims to help decarbonise the area’s carbon intensive businesses.

Other developments planned for the Teesworks site include blue and green hydrogen production plants, battery energy storage system developments and the Circular Fuels cutting-edge fuel-from-waste facility which will produce 50,000 tonnes of fuel per year from non-recyclable household and industry waste.

A battery energy storage system from EOS - Image credit: EOS

According to a recent study from commercial property agents Colliers, developments either in progress at Teesworks or in the final stages of being agreed will create more than 3,470 operational jobs, 6,900 construction jobs and a further 10,000-plus supply chain jobs – and these figures are with less than half the site developed.

With the end to coal-fired power stations coming as soon as this month, there is no question that renewable energy is the future.

What is encouraging is that the North East is playing a major part in that future.