Energy in the UK: Changing Demands

Coal was the dominant form of energy used in the UK for over a century. Coal was plentiful and cheap. It has a variety of uses:

• fuel for steam engines,

• fuel for homes, factories and offices,

• the production of gas,

• the production of chemicals.

British homes were designed to cope with coal. Near the back door would be the coal bunker. There were open hearths on which coal and wood fires were burnt.

Open coal fires look very attractive, but they have many problems. Coal is dirty, heavy and difficult to use. Rooms can fill with smoke when a door is opened. When the fire is finished, soot and ash are left.

Alternative forms of energy have become widely available in the UK since the 1960s. Oil, gas and electricity provide most of the country's energy. It is not all bad news for coal, however, because it is still the most important fuel used to generate electricity. New cleaner methods of using coal to heat houses have been developed.

Oil, gas and electricity are much cleaner and easier to use than coal. The price of the different forms of energy is also an important factor:

• During the 1960s oil and gas became cheaper while the price
of coal rose. Demand for coal fell dramatically.

• In 1973/74 the Oil Crisis made oil much more expensive. Gas
and coal were cheaper. Gas took a larger share of the energy market
as the North Sea gasfields were developed. There was even a revival
in the use of coal. This was reinforced by the great oil price
increases of 1979/80.

Unit 6

' In 1986 oil became much cheaper. Demand for coal fell • again.

Price and ease of use have been the major factors affecting the changing energy demand in the UK in the last forty years. In the future the exhaustion of energy sources will become important. The world's oil supplies may not last more than another forty years. Much of the world's oil and gas is located in areas which have suffered conflict, such as the Middle East. Supplies may be cut off from the UK for political reasons, as they were, briefly, during 1956 and 1973. Home energy source, of which coal is the largest, will then become more important for the UK again.

Past experience shows that there are no certainties in demand for energy within the UK. The future may hold many changes.

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