It’s very encouraging how fast Great Britain’s emissions from electricity have reduced over the last five years – 2017’s figures from the excellent MyGridGB show how far we’ve come.

This is mostly down to 4 things:

• closing coal power stations
• replacing a lot of coal with gas
• replacing some coal with wind, and some with biomass, mainly wood
• using a bit less electricity

The future looks good for solar and wind power

Less coal, less gas

We’re doing well on using less coal, the single biggest step Britain needed to take on climate change. I think the government will keep their promise to shut coal power down completely by 2025. It’s been good to see climate minister Claire Perry championing phasing out coal internationally – and her promotion to attend cabinet in the reshuffle is encouraging too. [Read more…]