Last Friday, a monumental happening occurred in Great Britain. For the first time since Thomas Edison opened the Holborn Viaduct power station in London in 1882, the country ran for 24 hours without any coal-fired power plants.
According to the National Grid, the longest amount of time England had previously gone without utilizing energy from fossil fuels was 19 hours, and that occurred in May. Days ago, however, that record was broken.
Rather than rely on coal, the National Grid was powered by a mix of 50.3% gas, 21.2% nuclear, 12.2% wind, 8.3% imports, 6.7% biomass and 3.6% solar on Friday. As Inhabitat points out, natural gas is not an entirely clean power source, but it is far less polluting than coal. Perhaps in the future, England will be able to power itself entirely from renewable resources, such as wind and solar. For now, this development is worth applauding.
It is inevitable that days such as this one will become more common. In 2015, the UK relied on coal for just 9% of its electricity needs. That’s an astonishing decline from 23% in 2015! And, the country has already pledged to close its last coal-fired power station by 2025 to curb climate change.
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