RATCLIFFE ON SOAR, United Kingdom—Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station has dominated the landscape of the English East Midlands for nearly 60 years, looming over the small town of the same name and a landmark on the M1 motorway bisecting Derby and Nottingham.
At the mainline railway station serving the nearby East Midlands Airport, its giant cooling towers rise up seemingly within touching distance of the track and platform.
But at the end of this month, the site in central England will close its doors, signalling the end to polluting coal-powered electricity in the UK, in a landmark first for any G7 nation.
“It’ll seem very strange because it has always been there,” said David Reynolds, a 74-year-old retiree who saw the site being built as a child before it began operations in 1967.
“When I was younger you could go down certain parts and you saw nothing but coal pits,” he told AFP.
Coal has played a vital part in British economic history, powering the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that made the country a global superpower, and creating London’s infamous choking smog.
Even into the 1980s, it still represented 70 percent of the country’s electricity mix before its share declined in the 1990s.
