In a marquee below, former workers, power industry executives, civil servants and a government minister gathered to say thanks to the staff at the UK’s last coal-fired power plant.<\/p>\n
Like any good wake, this was also a celebration of the 57-year-long life of the plant.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
A life in which it provided power to most of the East Midlands.<\/p>\n
The broadcast of the moon landings, the floodlights at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground and 6,821 episodes of EastEnders, all powered by electrons flowing from its turbines.<\/p>\n
A cosy factoid from Uniper, the company that owns the plant: it generated enough power in its lifetime to have made two trillion cups of tea.<\/p>\n
Away from the celebration, the mood in the control room was more sombre.<\/p>\n
Some of the staff have worked at the plant since it was owned by the Central Electricity Generating Board.<\/p>\n
The moment when they gave the instruction to stop generating the night before was, one of them told me, “very sad”.<\/p>\n
After shutting the plant down, another of the team walked through the now quiet turbine hall to say their goodbyes.<\/p>\n
They’ve known this moment was coming for a decade, ever since the government announced a phase-out of coal power by 2025.<\/p>\n
That lead time has allowed their union and employer to protect the jobs of all 140 workers at the plant.<\/p>\n
But there is now a far more ambitious – and necessary – goal to phase out all fossil fuels from our electricity grid by 2030.<\/p>\n
Managing that rapid transition, while protecting the jobs of tens of thousands of workers still employed in fossil fuel industries in the UK, will be much harder.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n
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