UK’s last coal fired power station closes. Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire has closed. Demolition of the site will follow after decommissioning, and is set to take two years. The site is situated off the A453 near the M1, and adjacent to East Midlands Parkway railway station.
It’s an East Midlands landmark providing power for 57 years, estimated by The Guardian (27 September) to make more than one billion cups of tea per day! Mike Lewis, CEO of the site’s owner Uniper, told the BBC News web site
that the closure was a key step in the “global route to decarbonisation”.
But what about the jobs lost as a result of the closure? Dr Helle Abelvik-Lawson from Greenpeace writes: ‘Ratcliffe closing is a momentous victory for the climate and people’s health, and well worth celebrating. But the move away from fossil fuels – and especially coal – has long been a struggle for the workers who are left behind. Fortunately, Ratcliffe’s legacy will likely be a positive one for its workers. The GMB, Prospect and Unite unions worked closely with Uniper, owners of the Ratcliffe power station, to plan and manage the impact of the site closure on the 154 workers on site. Processes to identify new jobs for workers to move to, and flexibly release them with full redundancy pay, were backed up by funding and support for workers to reskill and retrain.
The energy company told the BBC that 125 workers would stay on to fully close down the plant, and that it hopes the site could eventually become a zero-carbon technology and energy hub.
While this is undoubtedly a huge win, there’s no shortage of lessons – both good and bad – to be learned in future moves towards a fossil fuel-free UK. Unions warn that more than 30,000 jobs under threatened by the Labour government’s plans to ban new licences for oil and gas production in the UK.
Read more on this story from Greenpeace here.
Find out more about increasing Settle’s local renewable energy generation and consumption as ACE continues to develop Settle Local Energy Club here.