Keeping the Lights On Power to the People

We take electricity for granted...

Most people just think that electricity

comes through a cable in the ground to your house and that's it.

..and never give a second thought to how it's made.

The flames are nice and bright and bushy.

But behind the scenes,

our power companies are struggling to keep the lights on.

BEEPING

The National Grid want that energy now,

we can't afford to miss that instruction.

This winter, we could face blackouts.

You can't say, "I'm sorry, you'll have to turn your fridge off."

It's a fire at a coal-fired power station.

Power stations we've relied on for 50 years are coming down...

..but bills and profits have gone up.

Is anybody home?

How can these profits be fair

when people can't afford to pay for their energy?

The energy giants are under fire from all sides.

People hate you, let's be honest. They don't like you guys, right?

I've been told to go hang myself by a customer.

Right, I'm trying to help you, sir. Hello?

Now, one of the country's biggest, SSE, has let the cameras in,

filmed over one critical year.

Basically, if we don't generate enough, the lights will go out.

This is the surprising story of a hidden world...

Voila! Une turbine.

..as an army of workers...

Good morning!

..battle to keep our power flowing.

We need to make a saving of half a million pounds.

Where?

This time...

I think the writing's on the wall for quite a lot of UK coal, yeah.

..the story of one of our biggest power stations...

It's not what I expected.

We have not got a contract.

..as it fights to stay switched on.

Coal is the past, so they say!

We'll see what happens, eh?

This is Ferrybridge C in West Yorkshire,

one of only ten coal-fired power stations in the country

that together provide a third of all our energy.

Ferrybridge has been pumping out electricity since 1966.

It's also an endangered species.

It's still run from the original control room,

where production shift controller Darren Smith is starting his day.

-All this old technology...

-It feels like going back in time.

It feels like a Tardis.

I think there's been one or two TV programmes filmed

where they've used it as a backdrop.

As a power station or a sort of Starship Enterprise?

Well, as both, actually. I think it was on A Touch Of Frost.

It's just been on DCI Banks.

Darren has worked at Ferrybridge for 25 years.

Gauges and dials and alarms.

-It's ancient.

-Very, very old technology.

And this is what's keeping the lights on, still.

Can you show me around a bit?

Yes, I certainly can, yeah.

Is this all the original, what, 1967...?

Yeah, it is, with a bit of modern technology interspersed

so what we've got is we've got a few computer screens now,

a mixture of old and new.

This is the control panel where Unit Three's operated from.

At the moment, Unit Three is producing 477 megawatts

of power which you can see on the red gauge up there.

That's roughly the equivalent of a city the size of Leeds

that it's producing power for at the minute.

When Ferrybridge opened nearly 50 years ago, coal was king,

providing 80% of all our power.

This was the '60s - the era of the white heat of technology,

when providing power night and day mattered more

than whether you were polluting the planet.

-NEWS REPORT:

-Carnage is worst on the west-facing slopes

where the prevailing wind bombards the forest

with an extraordinary mixture of chemicals.

But by the 1980s,

concerns were growing about sulphur dioxide emissions

from Britain's power stations causing acid rain across Europe.

And then, in the '90s, the world started worrying

about carbon dioxide emissions driving global warming.

We began to crack down on the smoke from these chimneys.

Now, power stations like Ferrybridge

can only run for a strictly limited number of hours,

unless their chimneys are fitted

with expensive, hi-tech clean-up equipment.

These flue gas desulfurization units, known as FGDs,

take the sulphur out of their smoke.

That screen just there is where we monitor the emissions

and what's happened over the years is the Environment Agency

have brought in limits that we have to operate to so, for example,

we have to operate within certain limits for dust,

certain limits for nox and certain limits for sulphur.

The newest part of the control room, actually, is this desk here,

the desk that controls the flue gas desulfurization plant.

It's a bit like a huge chemistry set, really.

-That's keeping it clean?

-That's keeping it clean, yeah.

That's keeping the SO2 emissions or sulphur emissions down.

In its prime, Ferrybridge's four giant turbines

pumped out 2,000 megawatts of power -

4% of the nation's electricity.

But two of its turbines have recently been switched off

because of EU rules about air quality.

A reduced team of engineers,

including maintenance controller Ken Valentine,

must now keep the remaining two turbines running smoothly.

-Quick and easy!

-Eh?

-Quick and easy!

The best job!

It must have been very different

-when the other two units were running as well.

-Er...

Yeah, oh, yeah, we had more people. It was much busier. Erm...

When we had the four units as well, we tended to be on...

I don't know whether it's cos we've just got two units,

but you tended to be on longer cos you'd 2,000 megawatts available.

People like things in nice 2,000 megawatt lumps.

What was it like when they shut them down?

Strange.

It's like you've always been used to having four units

and you're quite proud of having four units, you know what I mean?

We were the first 2,000 megawatt station that was ever built

and everything so, yeah, you felt that the contribution

you were making was a substantial one

so when it went to two units, it was like the end of an era.

It was really strange, really strange.

But three months after losing half its turbines,

Ferrybridge suffers another crippling bow.

ALARM WAILS

Disaster strikes one of the remaining units.

So it's a fire at a coal-fired power station,

which is in Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire.

At one point, you could see the thick black smoke

rising from here, 12, 15, 20 miles away across Yorkshire.

You can see the building that has been worst affected.

It's part of Ferrybridge C Power Station,

some suggestions locally that that's one

of the desulfurization plants that helps clean up the emissions here.

The fire has destroyed Unit Four's FGD,

its vital desulphurization equipment.

Without it, the power station's future is in doubt.

Worse, in the space of three months,

the company has lost the equivalent

of three major cities' worth of power from its portfolio...

and from the nation's supply.

The World At One.

This is Martha Kearney with 45 minutes of news and comment.

The National Grid has warned

that Britain faces its tightest energy squeeze

since the winter of 2006...

In October 2014,

three months after losing so much power from Ferrybridge,

the National Grid announces that the difference

between what we're generating and what we're using is now tight.

Spare electricity capacity, which ran at about 5% last winter,

would be nearer 4% this year. Three years ago, the margin was 17%.

The last coal-fired power station was built 40 years ago,

but, without the full supply from these big beasts

keeping the lights on this winter, it will be a struggle.

There are people who are saying the reason

we have reached this point is because we're closing

coal-fired power stations in order to meet our climate change targets.

London, November 2014 - it's four months after the fire.

The company that runs Ferrybridge

must announce its half-yearly results.

The company's chief executive, Alistair Phillips-Davies,

knows he will face questions about the future of Ferrybridge.

Is it any different talking to analysts

and investors as opposed to the media?

The media are looking for sound bites more.

Everything's got to be about the consumer

and/or they're looking for a sensationalist story of some sort -

the lights going out or something.

I find them a little more negative.

What's bad that's going to happen, basically, tell us the bad stuff.

Investors, obviously they've got to earn returns.

They manage your pensions,

they manage money on behalf of all the people in this country.

They've got to earn money so, for them, a lot of it's around

what are the prospects for the future, that's the key thing.

That great line, "Show me the money", basically.

Hi, can I give you that one? That'd be great, thanks so much.

-How are you?

-Yeah, I'm great, thank you very much.

The company has made £370 million profit over the last six months,

but for the City analysts gathered to hear the results,

figures are only part of the picture.

They're also keen to hear

about the state of the company's fleet of power stations,

especially its thermal assets,

the older gas and coal power stations, including Ferrybridge.

We have wholly owned thermal assets

that can play an important part in keeping the lights on this winter.

Ferrybridge, where Unit Three returned to service

before the end of last month.

We could operate Unit Four

so it can contribute to the security of the country's energy supply,

but it will require agreement

that it can run in parallel with Unit Three.

If the fire-damaged Unit Four is to be restarted,

it will need approval from the Environment Agency.

Two weeks later, there is some good news for Ferrybridge.

Unit Four can be put back into service,

as long as it keeps its emissions under strict control.

That's it, OK.

Today, Ferrybridge's engineers

will begin the process of bringing Unit Four back to life.

WHIRRING

Unit Four, call back.

Hi, Colin, we're down next to the PA fans so ready when you are.

Having been switched off for so long,

the unit has to be coaxed back to life slowly.

It's a long, drawn out process that involves heating the boiler

and the turbine so it's not damaged by any sudden change in temperature.

The boiler burns pulverised coal

to temperatures in excess of 650 degrees Fahrenheit,

turning water into high-pressure steam.

Look at the lower burners, you can see that they're a lot larger flame.

The flames are nice and bright and bushy.

Everything's looking OK.

The aim of the process is to pass high pressure steam

through the turbine so that it spins a shaft that's connected

to an alternator that converts mechanical energy

in the spinning shaft into electrical energy.

So this is the turbine speed.

Now I've put steam to set, the turbine speed's picking up.

-What's it got to get to?

-3,000.

When it's spinning at 3,000 revolutions per minute,

it'll be running at the same frequency

as all the power stations in the country.

At that point, the unit can be synchronised

or connected to the National Grid...

with the help of the power station's original 1966 synchroscope.

It just needs a little persuasion.

Is it the oldest bit of kit in the plant?

It's probably twice as old as me, yeah.

It's not a complex device,

but it's the quality of the build which is important

so if you can see,

we're trying to get this slightly faster than the Grid when we sync.

How do you know how fast the Grid's going?

It tells us the relationship between...

-The Grid's a constant 50hz.

-50hz, OK.

And this is just the speed of our machine

related to the Grid before we synchronise.

Just making sure these voltages are within...

How will you know when it's ready to go?

We get a "check synchro" light.

We also know that about 12 o'clock

is when we're in phase with the Grid.

Then you flick a switch.

-So we're in our window now.

-BELL RINGS

So are you guys all right if I sync next time?

So, next time round...

There's no point hanging around,

otherwise we might lose turbine diffs.

So, coming up to 12 o'clock, closing...

That's the unit unload.

We're up to 15 megawatts.

So that's Unit Four back working for the first time since the fire?

That's correct, yeah.

With Unit Four connected to the National Grid,

its electricity is now effectively for sale.

Like any commodity, electricity is bought and sold on the market

at constantly fluctuating prices which reflect supply and demand.

The National Grid is the carrier of the electricity

and it has to make sure supply and demand

are matched across the whole country.

Key to the system are energy traders.

SSE's are based in the company's offices in Scotland.

They're at the heart of everything the business does,

making deals and contracts over a range of timescales,

from several years to just 24 hours ahead.

If there's a shortfall

in what the company's power stations are generating,

the day ahead team must replace it,

either with electricity bought in the market

or by switching on another of their power stations, whichever is cheaper.

You're looking at what's going on live across the UK now.

Yeah, so the main things for me

are seeing where the UK National Grid system is, where the margin is

and if they're forecasting to have enough power to meet all demand

so I'm looking at this sheet here

to see a projected out-turn of the system margin.

Hang on a second, the system margin?

The system margin is the balance or imbalance

that the National Grid will see between all the plant

they have down to generate against all the demand

that they forecast for that certain time.

That's not about SSE, that's what the Grid expects for the country.

Yeah, yeah.

So currently, across the evening peak,

which is round about half past six, seven o' clock,

we have all of our flexible hydro committed.

We have five coal plants running full load, running base load

and we have two gas plants running.

At the minute, what I'm looking at is we are currently 30 megawatts

short of our full demand requirement for the evening peak,

which is about half past six to seven o'clock,

and we don't have any other plant

that we can schedule just for that half-hour.

What tricks have you got up your sleeve for tonight?

You're 30 short, is that right?

Yeah, I don't really have any tricks.

We're only really left with the option of buying it

from the market so, at the minute, what the market is offering

is much more expensive than I'm willing to pay

so I'll wait until it gets closer to the time,

closer to about five o'clock.

The day ahead traders buy and sell electricity in virtual time,

an hour and a half ahead of real time.

The idea is to stop the traders from making last-minute deals

that could overload the grid or leave it short of electricity,

either of which could result in the lights going off.

Gates open and close an hour and a half ahead of the 30 minute blocks

in which electricity is traded.

I'm putting the numbers up that I'm willing to buy or sell at.

On this side, you have all those willing to sell

and the volume they're willing to sell at

so the volumes of megawatts they want to sell and their price

and then, on the other side,

the price that people are willing to buy at.

This is the part that's a bit like eBay.

"If that's a price that works for me, do I sell at that price

"because that's what works and that's a good price?

"Or do I wait to see if the value increases

"and I get a better value for the megawatts I'm generating?"

-Feels like a really complicated board game to me.

-Yeah!

Yeah. So I want to sell, change my volume...

Sell.

Back at Ferrybridge with both units now in service,

the power station is running at the beck and call of the market,

which it was never designed to do.

When Ken Valentine joined as an electrical fitter in 1978,

the units were run for extended periods without interruption,

sometimes for months on end.

Since privatisation in the '90s, it's run differently.

A lot of the kit's really old. It's an old-fashioned type place.

It's built to base load,

which means you switched it on and you ran it

until it had to fall off for whatever reason,

through a breakdown.

But it was designed to run all the time in a steady state.

I suppose it's like your car.

If your car's running along on a nice, good road

at a nice, steady speed, you'd expect it to last a lot longer

than it getting thrashed through town, changing gears,

wearing your clutch out.

That's the sort of analogy you could look at it.

So why does it have to be switched on and off all the time?

It's all money, at the end of the day.

Everything's down to money, isn't it?

Yeah, everything.

With the plant struggling to cope

with the constantly changing demands of the Grid,

a maintenance team of mechanical and electrical engineers

must continuously patch up the ageing machinery.

Where are we going, then?

It's the HP heater platform, just out on Unit Four, just out here.

-So what have you got to do?

-I'm changing that gasket.

-Massive, massive gasket.

-So, heavy engineering, then?

-Hell yeah!

It's broken. That's what it should look like.

Right, Ken, that's that job complete. Another success story.

Ripping!

-Were it just that gasket, then?

-It were just that gasket, yeah.

So I changed that and the valve operates fantastically well now,

thank you, so there's no exception, final clearance.

Grab some lunch and then we'll start again.

We'll get tore into another job, yeah.

-Thank you very much, Dave.

-You're very welcome.

How much does repairing something like that save SSE?

I think it's about £30,000 a day per heater bank

in a loss in efficiency.

So, you can see it's quite important

that it plays its part in the efficiency side of things.

So, yeah, it's a lot of money, isn't it? We're saving some.

So Dave's wages and Joe's wages for the last couple of hours

have been well earned in this case!

When you started here, was there a completely different culture?

-Cos it was state owned, wasn't it?

-It was the CGB.

Their ethos was, "We'll keep the lights on."

Now, it's, "We'll make sure our shareholders get a return,"

whichever way you want to look at it.

Before, they didn't have to pay shareholders

so all the money was reinvested or went back to the government

to reinvest in other things or whatever, didn't it,

with being state owned.

But that's gone now so you just have to deal with what you've got.

One and a half million people have applied to buy shares

in National Power and Powergen.

When Ferrybridge was privatised in 1991,

Britain had a healthy electricity surplus.

At first, the new energy market was like the Wild West.

But alongside smaller generators,

gradually a big six

of private companies emerged,

who both generated

and sold our power.

In that time, we've gone from surplus

to coming close to running out of power.

And the government has started to intervene more and more in the market,

with price guarantees,

carbon-reduction targets and subsidies.

Before privatisation,

Ferrybridge never had to convince the government of its value.

But now it, and power stations like it,

are being made to bid for a contract.

If the government thinks Ferrybridge's price is right,

it could make a difference between staying open or closing for good.

Right, well, a bit earlier than I thought it were going to come...

but we've had the provisional results of the auction from...

Tuesday.

The provisional results are out today, published by National Grid.

The team have had to bid for a contract

based on the lowest possible price per kilowatt

they think they can afford to generate at.

It's not what I expected,

but there's a few good points and a few bad points in this.

The bad points are we have not got a contract.

Ferrybridge has not got a contract.

It's come out at £19.40 a kilowatt,

so these payments are nowhere near

what people were expecting to get anyway.

We'll just have to...

figure it out, and see where we go from here.

OK, like I say, I'll leave one of them out,

I've got a copy...

and there's stuff on the internet,

and then have a think and if there's any questions

I'm sure loads of questions will come up -

and we'll pass them on.

In the meantime...

..carry on as normal.

If you lot have a normal.

-Carry on as abnormal.

-Thank you.

Had you been feeling optimistic, or...

confused?

Confused, I think, really.

All right. For me, anyway.

And...

Pessimistic, I suppose, I am, really.

Yeah, it is a bit. I mean, they're not...

-Not looking great for coal, is it?

-No.

No.

Is that what you expected?

No, not at all.

I was expecting to, erm...

I would've thought both Units Three and Four would have got it, to be honest with you.

Erm... It looks like one of the units at Fiddler's Ferry has failed, as well.

Which is also a non-FGD unit, so...

Yeah.

Bit of a shock, really, I suppose.

What does it mean?

Erm... Well, I suppose,

in some respects, it means that we're...

Well, we're not going to be participating in the capacity market, so,

there's a chance that...

Well, the units aren't going to make as much income, I wouldn't imagine.

Erm... I'm not sure what the long-term implications are,

to be fair.

I suppose we'll just have to watch this space.

Thank you.

Not winning a contract places a big question mark over the future.

But for now, the team must keep calm and carry on.

As we make life harder for coal-fired power stations,

the big winners are wind farms.

Encouraged by successive governments' subsidies,

SSE has followed the money and is now one of the UK's biggest generators

of renewable energy.

The jewel in the company's crown is here -

Greater Gabbard, the world's second largest offshore power station.

It stands deep in the North Sea,

15 miles off the Suffolk coast.

But wind power has its own problems.

It costs us, the bill-payers,

massive sums to build and maintain.

Keeping these 140 wind turbines turning

is a full-time occupation with its own challenges.

Every day here at the Lowestoft control centre,

a team of 120 technicians gathers,

ready to make the two-hour boat journey out to the site.

-What time is it?

-20 minutes.

Control Room supervisor Johannes DuPlessis

is in charge of monitoring wind speeds, wave height, and ocean swell.

He determines whether it is safe

for the crew to make the 30-mile round trip.

Today we've got a max wave height between 2.4 and 2.8 metres.

That's when it gets very choppy out there.

We have had waves recorded up to seven metres and such.

So, yeah, it can very rough out there.

And very quickly, also.

So, during a year, how often are you not able to go out?

It's about 42% of the time.

The availability for access for last year

was 57.72 that we got on them.

But then that leaves 42% of downtime that we cannot access the turbines.

-Coffee?

-Love one, kid. White one, please.

-A tea, too, please.

-It's very rare he makes them, actually!

Frank, what's going on?

Not a lot. Weather day today, I'm afraid.

What does that mean?

It means no sale, no work.

Loads of coffee.

And a nice breakfast!

Nice bit of weather out there, nobody's going out, so...

This is the downside of wind farming.

You want to be out, really, cos we had a weather day yesterday.

Tomorrow's not looking too good, either.

So, yeah, it's a bit strange for this time of year.

The only good thing going on out there today

is plenty of wind generation off the turbines.

The turbines'll be doing what they should do,

but, obviously, we're not.

-See you in the morning.

-Yeah, see you in the morning.

The turbines may be inaccessible by boat,

but they still need maintaining.

Step aboard, gentlemen.

To ensure that at least some of the crews make it to work,

the company keeps a helicopter on permanent standby.

PILOT:

How many teams are offshore?

Round about 35 teams offshore today.

Basically, a turbine at its full rate of production on a windy day

will make roughly £10,000 a day.

And that's why the investment in a helicopter

to restore generation for two or three days,

that we might lose if the boats can't get out there.

That's why the helicopter's worth it.

PILOT:

Since 2007 the company has invested over £3.5 billion

in wind generation.

But not everyone is a believer.

Are you what certain people call a wind sceptic?

Erm...

Have you ever looked on Grid Watch?

You can go on and there's loads of analogue dials.

And it'll show you what's being generated by what different type?

Yeah. So let's have a look.

-We'll see what wind is doing today.

-OK.

-For the record, it's a wet day in Yorkshire.

-Yeah.

A wet... It's fairly breezy, isn't it?

Wind today is doing...

5.36 gigawatts.

What is that...? Sorry.

That's what it's producing at the moment.

Coal is doing the lion's share, is it? Or is it gas?

Today it's coal, yeah. Coal today.

And wind is doing...?

12%.

So, wind's great,

but it's not windy all the time.

You can't say, "I'm sorry it's not very windy today,

"you'll have to turn your fridge off and you can't watch EastEnders.

"And I'm sorry that operation can't go ahead."

Yeah, whatever.

Do you think sometimes you're on the wrong side of history here?

Somehow you're, erm...

kicking against change?

THEY LAUGH

Coal's wonderful stuff. Brilliant.

There's millions and millions and millions of tonnes

of the stuff down there.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Come the next ice age, we'll be building hand-over-fist

coal-powered stations.

Get some sulphur into the atmosphere - heat it up.

But for the powers that be at SSE,

it's wind that's the future.

And today at Greater Gabbard there's no shortage of it.

After a 20-minute flight,

the technicians are about to be dropped off at work.

With its 140 turbines covering 91 square miles,

Greater Gabbard cost £1.7 billion to build.

It generates enough power for half a million homes a year,

energy which is fed back to shore

via sub-sea cables over 25 miles long.

PILOT:

A turbine has been temporarily shut down

to allow the helicopter to winch the technicians onto its roof,

150 metres above the North Sea.

For technicians Clive Moore and Martin Middleton,

this is the regular commute to work.

Have you got the pipe?

I will have in a minute.

Today they have been flown in to apply some lubrication.

Like any mechanical or electrical bit of equipment,

they need maintaining.

Just like your car, you have to check all your levels,

your grease, your oil...

This is grease...

which we are going to send through into the grease hopper.

Good to go.

Had a low warning on grease on the turbine,

so we need to check the system.

Make sure that bearings don't become low on grease.

If not, it can cost quite a lot of money to repair that sort of thing.

Seems a big effort for just a bit of grease.

It may well seem like that,

but if you think it would probably cost £1 million to put it back

if they don't have a grease,

then it's not really.

Are you a fan of offshore wind?

It's clean.

It's good for the environment.

Got to be the main factors, hasn't it?

I mean, no pollution...

You can't knock that, can you? Can't knock it.

Plus this is a beautiful environment to work in!

So, for us...

it's a win-win situation, really.

To have 140 structures out here not really bothering anyone...

It's crazy not to make it bigger and bigger.

Fine job, Mr Moore.

HE CHUCKLES

Wind now accounts for nearly 10% of all our electricity.

But the energy it produces is costly

and has to be heavily subsidised by us.

Is it fair that this private industry gets so much subsidy?

I think anything that is new needs some support, needs some help.

Offshore wind is expensive, but we definitely need it.

I'm sure in the early days when you had the first steam train,

that needed a little bit of help, as well, but we didn't

get rid of trains because they were expensive in the first year.

So, at 1.6 billion - has this paid for itself yet?

Ooh, erm...

I don't actually know when the wind farm will pay for itself, to be honest.

Even a wind farm the size of Greater Gabbard

can only supply 8% of the energy produced

by a major coal-fired power station like Ferrybridge.

Britain is one of the world's windiest countries.

But we are also richly endowed with seams of good-quality coal.

Power stations like Ferrybridge were built on top of them,

but since the pits were closed,

there's no-one left to dig the coal out.

Now it has to be shipped in from abroad.

It arrives at ports like this - Hunterston on the Clyde...

..right next to a nuclear power station.

This ship has come from Colombia in South America -

a four-week journey bringing some 170,000 tonnes of coal.

It'll take seven days working around the clock to unload its cargo,

before putting it onto trains to transport it to SSE's two coal-fired power stations -

Fiddler's Ferry and Ferrybridge.

Most of the coal is Colombian, Russian and USA.

There's a lot of American coal on the market just now

because the Americans are fracking gas at the moment.

So there's an abundance of American material on the market just now.

This train today is going to be taking 1,550 tonnes,

which takes approximately 20 minutes to load, which is quite good.

If you were to put that into terms of lorries and stuff,

you would be all day, whereas in the space of about an hour

we can have this train turned round.

-Are you a fan of coal?

-Yes, very much so.

I'm obviously more for coal than I am wind power.

I says, I'm not too keen. The only thing I would

say about staying in this area is we've got a nuclear power station

down there, and there seems to be more objections to trains

leaving here with coal on it than there does having a

nuclear power station, which I don't really understand.

Wind farms, basically, you can't regulate them.

It's the amount of windmills that you'll actually need.

Yes, I'm a fan of coal,

because I don't want to be going back to the dark days where

basically we're getting blackouts and stuff like that.

The coal plant at Ferrybridge is a range of black hills,

each of different coal from around the world.

Back in the day, when its four units ran without interruption,

it wasn't unusual to receive 17 coal train deliveries in 24 hours.

But not any more.

Global warming has turned coal into the bad boy of electricity generation.

Yorkshire was once awash with coal-fired power stations,

but nearly all have gone.

Wakefield, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Bradford, Kirkstall,

the list of closed coal stations goes on and on.

Coal-fired power stations are dying on their feet.

So you've worked here a while?

-30 years.

-30 years?

-30 years, yeah.

I started on station services, where I used to be a driver

and I used to enjoy it.

Where are we heading to now?

I'm going to take you up to the bunkers, where the coal goes in

to be fed through to the mills to be ground down.

So I'll...

We'll park up here and take you up into the bunker house.

This is...where all the coal is kept.

That's an empty bunker.

That is the only one that is no longer in use any more.

The government shut this unit down, and Unit Two,

so we're only a two-unit station now.

How does it make you feel to see these things not working?

Bit saddened, really, because it's our job security, at the end of the day.

So back in the day, all these would've been running?

They were all running 24 hours a day, yeah.

24 hours a day.

2,000 tonne, they hold.

-2,000 tonne?

-Yep.

I'll show you Unit Three, which has just been filled up.

There was a big change across society in deciding not to

use these things any more,

to move away from using coal to generate our power.

See, it's a European thing.

They've said because of the emissions.

But they're building coal-fired stations in Germany, by all accounts.

But they've got the specialised equipment from the start.

-It would cost us a lot of money to put them on ours.

-Yeah.

-It's all to do with pollution.

-Yeah, climate change.

This is Unit Three.

How many tonnes are in here?

About 1,500 tonnes in all.

And that will get it through what?

That's a good four or five hours here.

What do you reckon to all these wind farms and things then?

When you drive down the A1 and you see all these new wind farms,

do you think they're good for the future?

Good if it's windy, but not for the future, no.

When it's cold in November, December, January,

when it's freezing, there's usually not a lot of wind,

so they need a hell of a lot of them wind farms. Nothing like this.

But don't you worry about things like climate change?

-Do you think that's, you know...?

-I don't think it's us.

I think it's other countries who ought to worry about it, not us.

China, America, they're a lot more worse than us.

And they're doing nothing.

So, for me, I'm not worried about it, no.

All these tree huggers, nope, not bothered. Nothing for me.

What I'll do, I'll take you round to the yellow brick road and show you round the back.

You'll be able to get a glimpse of the future there.

The multi-fuel place.

As coal power stations are being edged towards history,

the Holy Grail is to find new forms of renewable energy that

are both green and reliable.

Right next door to the coal-fired plant at Ferrybridge,

SSE and a partner company are building a new power station.

One that makes electricity by burning household rubbish, instead of coal.

This new multi-fuel plant has been under construction for three years,

at a cost of £300 million.

This is the largest energy waste site in the UK.

We take in treated waste into the plant, we burn the waste,

we produce the energy, I think it's 68 megawatt, out the other side.

It's a cleaner type of energy.

Technology has driven the fact that this is now the most feasible way.

Take away from landfill, you know, we're putting in a reasonably

dry, clean fuel and we're not polluting the atmosphere.

It's a fantastic concept, fantastic idea.

But not all the differences are for the better.

The new multi-fuel plant can only generate around 7% of the power

produced by its older neighbour's two turbines.

In its day it was 2,000 megawatts, this is 68,

so my maths is probably worse than yours.

You know, a coal-fired station versus an energy waste station

is a completely different concept.

It's a dual role.

We're going to take waste away from landfill,

we're going to produce electricity,

we're going to boost with 160,000 homes.

It's definitely a better way for the future, absolutely.

Monitoring progress from his office window in the coal-fired power station

is senior engineer Mike Till, who, after 50 years

in the energy business, has just been rewarded for his services.

-Tell me about it.

-Yeah, I can certainly tell you about it, yeah.

Put that card to one side. There we go.

Oh, wow, it's a proper medallion, medal.

Yes, it says on it, "For God and the Empire."

It's the MBE.

It doesn't actually say MBE on the actual medal.

What's the citation for you?

Services to the energy sector and the community of Castleford.

To the energy sector?

So this is in recognition of your, how can I put it, long career?

Yes, indeed.

The investiture was at Windsor Castle yesterday.

-Who did it?

-The Queen.

-Yes, it was officiated by the Queen.

-What did she say?

She jokes a bit about the power industry...

Did she ask you about her bills or anything?

No, nothing as basic as that.

It was basically the fact I've got a long career within the industry,

50 years this year, and she said,

"Oh, you've seen a lot of changes then?"

And so we went into coal-fired power stations, to gas-fired power stations,

to the emphasis on the environment that there is now.

I'm intrigued she should say that you've seen such a lot of change,

coal, gas, to the future, and I was wondering, it makes me

think of what's behind you.

Well, I suppose, the only difference between this power station here

and the multi-fuel is the fuel.

I mean, you've got a boiler which is tubes full of water

converted to steam, the steam is then heated, superheated,

and fed to the actual steam turbine,

which produces the energy via the generator.

Do you think it's the future?

It certainly saves a lot of just dumping of waste.

The by-product is we're generating energy from it.

Granted, the amount of generation is quite small overall,

-compared with these size of plants.

-Do you know what it is?

It's 60, 65 megawatts, something of that sort.

-Percentage, this used to be 2,000 megawatts.

-Indeed.

Yes, and I suppose

when you look at the investment in the multi-fuel plant, from a

cost perspective, then, you know, you can do a lot with these plants.

What do you mean, if you spent the money which you spend on that...

Yeah, rather than having the multi-fuel,

if we'd put FGDs on One and Two they'd still be operating now,

and of course you would have 1,000 megawatts on Units One and Two,

compared with the 63 megawatts there.

It's now April 2015, and at the company's Glasgow office,

the executive committee are holding their last monthly meeting

before they must announce end of year results.

Once again, wind farms are on the agenda.

All right folks, I'd like to present the Clyde extension wind farm

for gate three approval.

The capex we're requesting is £216.58 million.

The committee has to make recommendations to the

board about the direction of the business, including investment

to double the size of one of its existing wind farms.

A big, challenging project, of course.

-But I think we've a good team on it.

-All right.

Everybody happy for it to go forward to main board approval in May,

just prior to the results?

£216.58 million, and not a penny more.

-THEY LAUGH

-Thank you very much.

One of the things that struck me was that today we heard mention of wind,

we heard mention of gas, we didn't hear anything about coal,

and I wondered what the future is for coal?

Coal, I think, is challenged, at the moment.

We're certainly going through some difficult conversations about what we do with coal.

We'll have to wait and see,

but the future of coal in this country is tricky right now.

Coal plants are losing money,

and there may be some hard decisions that we and others will have to take.

Government policy is not heading in that way, decarbonisation

and all those things are not really heading in that way,

so there's just a whole bunch of issues

that are conspiring against coal at the moment.

So the writing's on the wall?

I think the writing's on the wall for quite a lot of UK coal, yeah.

Over the next five years I think we will see some

significant closures, and maybe some of that much sooner.

At Ferrybridge, Units Three and Four have now been running

for almost four months, but both are due to be

switched off for their annual outage, or service, in a matter of weeks,

and there's mounting concern about the station's future.

-What's going on? Come on, give us the lowdown.

-Today?

Well, just generally with Ferrybridge life. How's spirits?

I don't think they're too...

HE LAUGHS NERVOUSLY

Erm...

I think they're probably a little bit down at the minute, I would imagine.

Why is that?

The fact that the budgets seem to be getting cut left, right and centre,

and I suppose, in a way, that's kind of getting people

worried about their jobs a little bit.

Which budgets are being cut? Which ones?

There's been various, actually.

One of the big ones that's been cut is the actual outage budget for Unit Three.

That's the kind of summer servicing?

Yeah, so what happens is, every

so many years the units have to come off and they get basically

shut down for a prolonged period.

Anything up to 12 to 20 weeks.

Unit Three was due for its major outage next week.

It's still going ahead, the outage,

but it's going ahead with a vastly reduced budget.

I think that's got a few people concerned.

-What do you read from that? What do you take from that budget situation?

-Erm...

I think the thing you could take from it is, I suppose you

could call into question the lifespan of the station, probably.

Are they cutting the budget

because they're wanting to fall short on the station's life,

or are they cutting the budgets simply because of financial pressures?

It's hard to say, really.

And it's not just the budget for the outage that's being cut.

Richard came by earlier, Monday, and said,

"I've just been told I need to find £500,000.

Who's Richard?

Richard Robson is my boss's boss, sort of thing.

He came by and said, "We need to make a saving of £500,000."

Where?

Have we got £500,000, you know what I mean?

But, yeah, apparently the budgets are getting cut and cut and cut,

and we need to save money.

Because they're not making as much money out of Ferrybridge?

They're not investing as much money in Ferrybridge,

so you don't do work.

You just say, "Well, I'll not take that to pieces

"and put it back together again."

And somewhere down the line it comes and bites you on the backside

because you haven't maintained it, and it'll just come and get you,

and then there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"Oh, no. No, we need it to work.

"Do you know how much money we're losing?"

Martin looked at that.

WHIRRING

Makes a noise!

WHIRRING

When I retire and leave here, I want this place to keep going.

Because I think it's an asset for the country.

It's not... It don't make, I don't know...

balloons or whatever,

where you can get that from anywhere, sort of thing.

It makes electricity and people really, really...

The world runs on it, doesn't it?

You can't de-invent it, take it away, can you?

People wouldn't stand for it, would they?

Two days before the summer outage there are more worrying

developments for the staff at Ferrybridge.

This time, it's the supply of coal itself which is causing anxiety.

What's going on at the moment? You're running low on coal, is that right?

Yeah, Unit Four is supposed to be coming off on 9th April,

but, as you have seen, Russian coal is low-sulphur coal,

what that burns isn't going

to last that long, so it's coming off tomorrow night, by all accounts.

Is that it, do you reckon?

They've told the traders, by all accounts,

it will be coming off then.

But is that just off for the summer or do you reckon...?

Yeah, they're both... No, it'll be coming back on,

it's just they're both going off for major outages.

That's the Russian there, is it?

This is what's left of the Russian here, yeah.

Is it usual to run out of coal?

Er, no, not really.

But...

I've never known it before.

Coal is the past, so they say.

Do you not believe it?

There'll be a shortfall of electric somewhere along the line.

And the wind farms ain't the answer. For me, anyway.

-Why is that?

-We'll see what happens, eh?

It's a month since Ferrybridge closed for its summer maintenance.

And in London, the company is due to announce its end of year results.

Once again, analysts gather, and, once again,

the future of Ferrybridge is on the agenda.

Morning. How are you?

Financially, it costs over £50 million a year simply to keep

a station like Ferrybridge open.

Environmentally, it is a major emitter of CO2,

and therefore a contentious source of electricity.

Against this background,

we've concluded we should not reopen Unit Four of Ferrybridge,

where equipment was badly damaged during last summer's fire.

We've also concluded that Unit Three should be

closed by the end of the current financial year, which will

mark the end of coal-fired generation for the station.

Ferrybridge is set to be closed for good in early 2016,

with the loss of around 180 jobs,

although some staff will be redeployed.

-See you later.

-See you. Have a good weekend.

-And you.

If you had to go to Ferrybridge to speak to the workforce there,

what would you be telling them?

I think exactly what we said.

It was a very, very tough decision for us.

The plant is old, the closure is inevitable, given where government policy is going.

One of the people who works there,

who's worked the longest, said to me,

"Oh, there's a downer on coal."

One of the great understatements of our last six months,

and presumably this is the final expression of that downer on coal.

Yeah, slightly unfortunate terminology,

but, yeah, people are moving away from coal.

We're responding to what the nation's telling us

because they're voting in politicians

and governments who are making that policy.

'The new confidence that supply margins in the industry

'as a whole are such that we will avoid the risk of blackouts,

'even if we get a very harsh winter.'

Certainly, everything I hear from the National Grid

and Secretary of State indicates that they're comfortable.

We're certainly doing our bit in terms of providing information,

and indeed Ferrybridge won't close until the end of the winter.

But, ultimately, I think that question has to go to them.

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