United Kingdom's energy consumption

Official Name: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Summary: The United Kingdom has historically used all types of fossil fuel energy for industrial and other purposes. By the twenty-first century, this developed nation had added nuclear energy and begun developing wind, tidal, solar, and other alternatives.

As an island nation located off the northwestern coast of Europe, the United Kingdom (UK) has long been forced to consider reliable means of addressing its energy needs. Through the 1940s, most of the nation’s generating capacity was fired by coal, with oil providing most of the remainder. The UK started to develop a nuclear generating capacity in the 1950s; the Calder Hall reactor, among the world’s first commercial nuclear stations, was connected to the grid in 1956. During the mid-1970s, the flow of continental shelf and North Sea petroleum and natural gas fueled fresh economic growth, although the oil portion peaked in 1999 and by 2012 output was about half that peak level. However, new gas and oil projects in the North Sea were approved in 2023, setting the stage for an expansion of production.

In the 1990s a combination of factors led to the so-called “dash for gas,” during which the use of coal was scaled back in favor of gas-fueled options. This period was sparked by the UK’s broad new national policy of privatization, which included selling off the National Coal Board, British Gas, and the Central Electricity Generating Board; the introduction of laws facilitating competition within the energy markets; technological and financing factors that favored gas-fired turbine plants; and the huge upswell in the availability of more economically deliverable gas from the North Sea fields. Despite these disruptions in the fossil fuel sector, these nonrenewable forms of energy continued to be used to a large share of UK energy production into the 2020s. For example, in 2022, while coal only accounted for 1.5 percent of UK energy production, gas was responsible for 38.5 percent, making it the country's most common energy source.

Also in the 1990s, renewable energy sources began to contribute to electric generating capacity in the UK, adding to the already extant hydroelectricity generating sector, which had until that time remained rather small. British scientific and industrial research assets had been applied to nuclear energy for domestic power production since the late 1940s (at that time, similar efforts in the United States were mainly committed toward military uses, such as nuclear submarine propulsion). By the mid-1950s, the first nuclear-powered electric generating stations were ready to come on line to provide power to the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors in the UK. By 2022 renewable energy sources accounted for nearly 42 percent of energy production in the UK, with nuclear power accounting for another 15.5 percent. That same year Britain (not including Northern Ireland) became a net energy exporter for the first time in decades.

Coal

Before 1800, extraction methods for coal were relatively primitive, and a great deal of coal was left in place throughout the UK. As a result, for example, the deeper Tyneside coal pits (300 to 1,000 feet deep, considered extreme for that era) had only had about 40 percent of their coal extracted. Coal deposits were so abundant across Britain that mining could be increased as needed to meet surges in an overall rapidly rising demand. By 1770, before the dawn of the Age of Steam, the annual output of coal was some 6.25 million long tons (the equivalent of a week and a half’s output in the 20th century with modern extraction methods well in place). After 1790, in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and its ravenous appetite for wood and then coal to feed steam engines at all levels of the industry and transport sectors, production soared, reaching 16 million long tons by 1815.

Coal miners, less menaced by imported labor or by the machines of the day than were their peers in the textiles industry, began in the mid 19th century to form trade unions and fight for increased wages and better working conditions from mine owners and royalty lessees. As a strategic resource—powering all manner of machinery, fueling the critically important blast furnaces at the heart of the iron and steel industries, as well as heating millions of homes, businesses, and factories—coal transformed into a political, as well as an everyday energy, issue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The colliers, keenly aware of the economic and strategic value of this king of fuels, fought for better working conditions and fairer treatment by the mine and mill owners. Much of the “old left” or labor segment in British politics can trace its origins to the coal-mining era; the main labor union, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), was founded in 1888. Twenty years later, in 1908, the MFGB claimed 600,000 members—an extraordinary mass, when considered in context of the total UK population then standing at 43 million.

In 1926 a general strike stopped the UK’s coal production for 10 days. It was called by a federation of labor groups, the Trades Union Congress. Although other factors typical of industrial workers’ general demands were involved, the chief goal of the strike concerned the specific grievances of the coal miners: concerns related to the very dangerous working conditions, complaints of reduced pay, and resistance to the longer shifts facing colliers. At the conclusion of the strike, miners felt that they had been betrayed by the government—and they had indeed lost out on each of their demands. Furthermore, the owners of the coal industry set about with renewed vigor to automate as many elements of coal mining and milling as possible. Ironically, while employment in the UK coal fields was drastically reduced as the 20th century wore on, many of the technological developments being introduced to drive up productive capacity in mines also had the effect of helping to improve the safety of coal workers in Britain and around the world.

In the aftermath of World War II, with its ruinous effects on so many national economies, coal—still the UK’s primary energy source—figured greatly in policy discussions of energy supply, becoming a ceaselessly debated, hotly contested political issue. In the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of 1946, the assets of the industry were taken under full government authority (the nation’s coal reserves had already been nationalized in 1942, in the depths of war). The coal industry in Britain remained in public ownership until a complete reversal in the late 1980s, when many mines were shut down, and then the remainder of the industry was sold to corporate interests (this was followed in the 1990s by the privatization of the railroad and electrical systems of the UK).

Among the factors driving coal’s decline in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s were the availability of cheaper imports, the final stages of replacement of coal in many functions by oil, and ready availability of oil and gas from North Sea fields, as well as pressure from environmental groups. As a result, the mining industry disappeared almost completely in the UK well before 2000. Starting in 2001, the UK imported more coal than it produced.

In December 2015, the UK’s last deep pit mine, Kellingley Colliery, in Yorkshire, closed. That same year, the UK government announced it would close its ten remaining coal power plants by 2025. However, as of 2024, one coal power plant, Ratcliffe, remained open. Coal was also still mined, however, in a handful of opencast pits in South Wales and elsewhere. By that time UK Coal PLC, once the largest coal mining company in the UK in the twenty-first century, produced about half the coal in the nation—its output in 2009 was just 7 million tons. At that time UK Coal employed about 3,000—and a portion of them worked in noncoal divisions: renewable energy and real estate.

The industry shrank even further in subsequent years; for example, in August 2020, one of the last opencast pits in the UK, located near Durham, closed. In 2023 coal only about 1 percent of UK energy generation came from coal.

Oil and Gas

Development in the offshore oil and gas industry was spurred in particular by the 1973 oil crisis. This began to turn the arduous and costly engineering solutions involved into more profit-oriented answers to meeting energy demand in the UK. Fossil fuel production from North Sea reservoirs had been a fledgling industry in the 1960s, but the scale needed to make it profitable was not seen to be within ready reach—until the commodity prices of petroleum goods suddenly spiked skyward, courtesy of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which fomented the 1973 crisis. Pervasive tapping of the North Sea fields, many of which are of the deepwater type, has only been made possible by pioneering discoveries and innovation in engineering—akin to a space industry but under the sea. Many fields are located far from land, adding transport headaches to the difficulties of drilling. Continued periodic energy shortages in the latter part of the twentieth century, and the more recent exploding demand of developing nations, however, have led to new hydrocarbon fields being developed in ever deeper and more remote waters, extending for instance to the rugged waters of the Atlantic Ocean west of Scotland.

Deepwater oil extraction is at least as dangerous as coal mining; there have been tragedies along the way. For example, in 1988, the North Sea Piper Alpha oil platform caught fire and exploded, killing 167 workers. The industry—in which many rigs and related equipment is leased, not owned—has grown generally more safety-conscious and somewhat strict about safety and regulatory audits, though concerns persist.

The North Sea (including the giant areas in Norwegian territorial waters) is considered to hold more than half of all global reserves of oil and natural gas. However, production of oil in the UK section declined after 1999—when it peaked at 398 million barrels. By 2007, the UK’s North Sea rigs and platforms output was 220 million barrels.

A shift in this trend occurred during the early 2020s. In September 2023 the UK government approved an expansion in North Sea oil and gas production; the following month, it granted one hundred licenses for new oil and gas projects in the Rosebank field, a major source of fossil fuel deposits in the North Sea. While supporters of this move argued it would reduce UK dependency on imports and control consumer energy costs, a number of activists and international agencies, including the United Nations, criticized this decision to expand UK fossil fuel production.

At that time, fossil fuels remained a vital resource for the transportation sector—where they remained the most popular fuel source, despite efforts to promote electric vehicles and other forms of transportation not reliant on oil or gas—as well as the petrochemical industry in the UK. Like natural gas, the bulk of oil originated offshore, either in continental shelf or North Sea reservoirs.

The UK had proved petroleum reserves, including crude oil and natural gas, of an estimated 4 billion barrels at the end of 2021, the greatest portion of this being in its North Sea fields. That year about 490 million barrels of oil were produced from these reserves.

During the early 2020s, natural gas was the leading source of electricity generation and heat in the UK; in 2022 natural gas provided about 38.5 percent of UK electricity in 2022. Despite shifts toward the promotion of the country's green energy sector and the development of renewable energy sources, at that time natural gas was expected to remain a major source of the country's energy in the near future.

Nuclear Power

As in the United States, Russia, and other countries of the former Soviet Union, the civilian nuclear Power generation industry grew out of roots in the military. The UK’s first reactors were built at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell, Oxfordshire, a military venture. The first reactor at AERE, the 3-kilowatt Graphite Low Energy Experimental Pile, commenced operation in August 1947. This was followed by the 1948 commissioning of the first large reactor outside the United States, the 6-megawatt British Experimental Pile, known in the industry as having demonstrated the viability of commercial power reactors. Other prototype reactors were built in the 1940s and early 1950s, and the government announced in 1953 the launch of its civil nuclear power program. The following year, the Atomic Energy Authority Act of 1954 created the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). As well as providing nuclear material for the country’s nuclear defense program, the UKAEA was to develop nuclear reactor technology for civil uses.

Queen Elizabeth II opened one of the world’s first commercial nuclear power stations, at Calder Hall in October 1956. The reactor was the first of eight small prototypes to be built at Calder Hall and Chapelcross in southwest Scotland. Subsequent units were progressively scaled up tenfold and optimized for continuous electricity production. Their thermal efficiency was initially very low, about 22 percent for the first single-use units. This rose to around 28 percent for the later units of the 26 built in the United Kingdom. The industry became export-oriented as well; two units were sold to Japan and Italy, and similar units were built in France. The initial UK nuclear power program set a goal of building between 1,400 and 1,800 megawatts of capacity by 1965. The 1956 Suez crisis accentuated concerns about shortages of coal and oil, prompting a proposed increase in the nuclear build program to between 5,000 and 6,000 megawatts.

In 2023 nuclear power accounted for 15 percent of UK energy generation; at that time, there were nine active nuclear reactors in the country, with two under construction and thirty-six shut down. New nuclear reactors were schedule to go online as of 2024.

Renewable Energy

The UK is well placed to explore renewable energy sources, as it has some of the world’s largest free supplies of wind, wave, and tidal flows. The UK has been investigating the use of some of these since the 1960s. Wind turbines sited in windy parts of the UK countryside could in principle generate perhaps one-fifth of the nation’s electricity. The potential for wind turbines mounted in shallow water offshore is even larger, providing perhaps up to half of UK electricity requirements, although the construction and maintenance cost would be higher than for on-land machines. Typical large modern wind turbines have a rated output (at full power) of 1,000 to 2,000 kilowatts. Turbines are usually grouped together to form wind farms. Wind moving over water creates waves that could provide energy as well. The UK wave energy potential, if suitable floating devices could be located in deep water out to sea, could provide up to one-fifth or more of the UK’s electricity requirements. Smaller amounts of power, at potentially lower cost, could be obtained from devices operated nearer to the shore (“in-shore” or “coastal” systems) and from shore-mounted units sited in gullies.

Tidal flows also are a potential source of renewable energy. High tides can be trapped behind a barrage on suitable estuaries, creating a head of water that, when released, can be used to drive turbines, as with low-head hydroelectric plants. Like some existing hydro schemes, some tidal barrages might be large. For example, the scheme proposed for the Severn Estuary in 2009 would have had around 8 gigawatts of installed generating capacity and could have supplied 6 percent of UK electricity requirements, but the proposal was scrapped in 2010. The total UK tidal barrage potential is, according to some estimates, capable of meeting 11 percent of UK electricity requirements. In addition, the fast-moving tidal streams in some areas, such as those near Scotland and the Channel Islands, might also be used to generate power, using propeller-type devices located in the flow. If all suitable tidal stream sites were used, they might provide another 20 percent of UK electricity requirements. By the 2020s multiple tidal stream turbines were active in the UK and had begun providing the country with small amounts of energy.

More conventionally, although the energy growth potential is limited, hydroelectricity has long been generated from the flow of rivers and streams. Hydropower is harnessed by means of small low-head, run-of-the-river hydroelectric turbines, as well as by the more familiar and larger hydroelectric dams. These have been used for decades and, with their construction costs now paid off, the latter produce the cheapest electricity in the UK.

In addition to these electricity-supplying options, the UK has a significant solar energy potential, the currently most cost-effective way of exploiting it being by well-insulated passive solar houses, designed with large, south-facing windows to trap solar heat. Solar energy can also be converted into electricity via the photovoltaic solar cell. The harvesting of energy crops looks increasingly likely to provide a significant source of biofuels of various sorts. These biofuels include liquids, such as ethanol and biodiesel for transport use; gases, such as methane; and solids, including wood, used for heating or electricity production. Short rotation coppicing of fast-growing willow or poplar on surplus agricultural land is another biomass option, with the resultant wood chips being consumed in a gasifier plant to produce hot gases, which in turn are used to drive electricity-producing gas and steam turbines. Some industrial and domestic wastes can also be used as fuel, although environmentalists have expressed concern over toxic emissions from waste combustion plants. The energy potential of collecting heat from geothermal sources deep underground is quite large; perhaps 10 percent of UK electricity requirements could be met by hot, dry rock deep underground.

Amid ongoing global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by the early 2020s the UK had expressed varying levels of commitment to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. However, this goal was somewhat contentious due to what some perceived as the short-term economic risks of shifting away from natural gas and other fossil fuels. In September, 2023 Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the UK at that time, announced a shift away from certain short-term green energy goals amid a cost-of-living crisis in the country. This decision, which included the delay of a ban on petroleum-burning cars from 2030 to 2035 and the rescheduling of a phasing out of home oil heaters, led some to express concerns that this could reduce investment in the green energy sector.

In 2024 the UK obtained about 42 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, chiefly from wind power, biofuels, and waste, with solar energy and hydropower accounting for smaller shares. That year also saw the country produce a record-breaking amount of power from wind energy. While green energy had begun to account for a sizable share of UK energy production by that time, many emphasized the need for an expansion of this sector in order for the UK to meet various clean energy goals.

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