The UK's rate of thermal coal burn continued to plummet to new lows with just 1.498 million mt consumed during August, the country's lowest monthly total since records began in 1995, according to data by the Department of Energy and Climate Change Thursday.
UK thermal coal consumption in August fell by 2% on the month and 56% on-year, the data showed.
DECC attributed lower coal burn over the three months to August to a number of reasons, including outages at several power stations, Drax Power's unit 2 being converted to biomass earlier in the year, lower demand for generation overall and increases in generation from renewables.
Over the first eight months of 2014, the UK's thermal coal burn averaged 3.01 million mt/month, down from 4.18 million mt/month in the corresponding 2013 period.
Largely as a result of falling use of the fossil fuel for electricity generation, thermal coal stocks at UK power generators increased 4% on the month to 14.66 million mt August 31, their highest end-of-month total since November 2013.
Total August coal imports into the UK -- including metallurgical coal -- fell 54% on-year to 1.94 million mt, a more than four-year low, the DECC data said.
