Giant chimneys demolished as power company 'consigns coal to the history books'

These dramatic images by Press Camera Club photographer Ian Bale show the moment when two 200-metre tall chimney stacks at Ferrybridge Power Station were demolished yesterday.

Power company SSE also demolished the boiler house at Ferrybridge, in a move which it says 'consigns coal to the history books'.

The detonator button was pressed by Alok Sharma, who will be president of COP26, the UN climate change summit due to start in Glasgow in just over two months time on October 31.

The boiler house was the first to be demolished at Ferrybridge... Picture: Ian Bale

“Pressing the button on this demolition is a symbolic moment for me and demonstrates that change is possible," he said. "But to limit global temperature rises and keep 1.5C within reach, the whole world needs to plan to consign coal power to the past.”

SSE’s principal contractor Keltbray carried out the demolition using controlled explosives, with a 250-metre exclusion zone being put in place to ensure safety.

Nearby homes were evacuated for a short time on Sunday morning.

Then the two tall chimneys began to buckle and crumple. Picture Ian Bale

Ferrybridge, a coal-fired power plant, produced electricity for more than 50 years before being closed by SSE in 2016.

Yesterday's demolition came less than a month after four huge cooling towers were demolished at the former Eggborough power station, near Selby - and just weeks after the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) issued a ‘code red’ warning to humanity on the urgent need to decarbonise.

In June this year, the UK Government announced that Great Britain will no longer use coal for energy generation from October 2024, a year earlier than previously planned.

The chimneys collapse amid a rolling cloud of dust. Picture: Ian Bale

Ferrybridge is less than 35 miles from Keadby in North Lincolnshire, where SSE is working to replace coal power generation with low-carbon alternatives. It is planning one of the UK’s first power stations equipped with carbon capture technology by 2027, as well as the world’s first major 100 per cent hydrogen-fired power station by the end of the decade.

The plan is to locate these power stations on the same site as SSE’s under-construction Keadby 2, which uses technology already capable of blending low-carbon hydrogen and will, the company claims, be Europe’s most efficient power station.

The dust begins to settle over a skyine that suddenly looks very different. Picture: Ian Bale