Scotland Ends Coal-Fired Generation after 115 Years
Coal-fired generation in Scotland ended last week when the Longannet power plant in Fife switched off the last of its four generation units on March 24.
Owner ScottishPower, part of the Spanish power group Iberdrola, said closure marked the end of a 46-year shift for Longannet which, when it came online in 1969, was Europe’s largest coal-fired plant.
“Longannet has contributed more electricity for the national grid than any other power station in Scotland’s history, and it is a sad day for everyone at ScottishPower,” said the latter’s generation director Hugh Finlay. No decisions have been taken on the future of the site, but the company expects to outline its plans before the end of the year.
Not everyone was shedding a tear. Friends of the Earth Scotland director Richard Dixon said: “For the first time in at least 115 years there will be no coal being burnt to make electricity anywhere in Scotland. For a country which virtually invented the Industrial Revolution, this is a hugely significant step, marking the end of coal and the beginning of the end for fossil fuels in Scotland.” Longannet was still the EU’s 3rd largest coal-fired plant towards the end of its life, said Dixon. Its generation capacity at maximum was 2,400 MW.
Various alternative uses for the site have been cited in the past, but the future for employment there is less certain. ScottishPower said the plant directly employs 236 people, and some would be re-deployed, but only 45 could be involved in de-commissioning.
Algy Cluff, founder of Cluff Natural Resources, last year suggested that his firm’s ‘Underground Coal Gasification project’ -- effectively a controlled combustion of offshore coal seams – could supply a new power plant at Longannet or the existing petrochemical complex at nearby Grangemouth.
But its Kincardine UCG project was put on hold after the Scottish government last October declared a moratorium on UCG until 2017 at the earliest. FoE Scotland also opposes UCG.
The other use was as a post-combustion Carbon Capture and Storage project.
This option was proposed by Royal Dutch Shell, ScottishPower, National Grid and technology provider Aker Clean Carbon, but was shelved in 2011. It would have involved £1bn of investment spent to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) at the now closed coal-fired plant; the CO2 would have been piped offshore to Shell’s eventually depleted Goldeneye gas field in the UK North Sea. But partners upped their funding request to £1.5bn and the UK government instead backed CCS proposals in Yorkshire (White Rose) and elsewhere in Scotland (Peterhead) in their application for vital EU ‘NER300’ co-funding.
Mark Smedley