UK’s Coal Power Plants Will Be Phased Out within the Next 10 Years

Energy secretary Amber Rudd has proposed for the remaining coal-fired power plants will be shut down by 2025 and their use will be restricted in 2023.

Ms Rudd wants more gas-fired stations to be built since relying on "polluting" coal is "perverse".

Only if gas-fuelled power can fill the void created by closing coal-powered stations would coal plants be shut, she said.

Environmentalists are concerned little is being done to promote renewables.

Announcing the consultation, Ms Rudd said: "Frankly, it cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the UK to be relying on polluting, carbon-intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations.

"Let me be clear: this is not the future.

"We need to build a new energy infrastructure, fit for the 21st century."

Former US vice president Al Gore, an active campaigner for clean energy, described the announcement as an "excellent and inspiring precedent".

If coal power plants are able to install carbon capture and storage (CCS) before 2025, they would not be closed. CCS has long been mooted as the answer to cleaning up coal plants, but very little progress has been made in developing the technology, with just one commercial scale plant currently operating in the world.

Ms Rudd also said investment in nuclear power was vital to the government's policy.

"Gas is central to our energy-secure future," she said. "So is nuclear."

Shebelieves that plans for new nuclear power stations, including those at Wylfa inWales, Moorside in Cumbria and Hinkley Point in Somerset, could eventuallyprovide almost a third of the low carbon electricity the UK needs.