UK coal burning fell off a cliff in recent years because there's been a huge push to switch to natural gas, which can be switched on and off much faster and so

UK coal burning fell off a cliff in recent years because there's been a huge push to switch to natural gas, which can be switched on and off much faster and so doesn't have this problem when used as a backup to intermittent renewables. (After Russia invaded Ukraine and natural gas prices skyrocketed, there were actually articles in publications like the Guardian attacking the British government for how dependent this made us on gas compared to Germany.) That is, basically the only way for the coal not to run anyway is if you switch it off permanently and replace it with non-coal-based fossil fuel plants at great expense, which also requires a bunch of ongoing development of non-coal fossil fuel reserves and production to feed it, something green groups are opposed to. Whilst there's enough already-known fossil fuel reserves to blow past CO2 emissions targets and environmental groups always use this to argue against further exploration and development, those known reserves contain far too much coal and too little natural gas.