Coal from mines around this northeastern English port town made the U.K. an industrial and imperial superpower in the 19th century. In the 21st, the country has all but ditched the fuel.
By kicking its coal habit, the U.K. has charted a route for the U.S. and other nations seeking to reduce carbon emissions. British governments made it prohibitively expensive to burn coal while prodding investors to plow tens of billions of dollars into renewables, energy executives and financiers say.
Millions of households are bracing for a difficult winter of rising energy bills. So are companies in the steel, cement, glass, paper and chemical industries. Shortfalls of gas and power have prompted factories to throttle back production, deepening supply-chain problems and increasing prices for customers.
The energy squeeze is unfolding before world leaders negotiate plans to limit climate change at the United Nations conference in Scotland starting later this month. Scientists say that reducing emissions to the levels required to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels—a key goal of the conference—will require effectively eliminating coal-generated power.
The Glasgow conference is a chance for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to showcase the U.K.’s transition. So it was an awkward moment for the British hosts when utilities in the country recently fired up a handful of idle coal plants after winds died down and gas supplies ran low.
Coal generated less than 2% of electricity in the U.K. in 2020, according to International Energy Agency data, compared with a fifth in the U.S., a quarter in Germany and almost a third in Japan. Surviving U.K. coal power stations have orders to close by late 2024.
Mr. Johnson has said the drive to cut emissions could rejuvenate the economy, particularly in struggling towns such as Blyth that were Labour Party strongholds until he flipped them Conservative in 2019.
The evidence is mixed. Blyth, just north of Newcastle, is home to a growing number of companies in the renewable and battery industries, but thousands of secure jobs lost when coal mines closed are yet to be replaced. Unemployment here is higher than in the U.K. overall and the town’s main drag is peppered with closed shops and discount stores.