End of the line for old king coal?

When, on January 10, 1709, Abraham Darby fired up his new furnace for the first time, he could never have envisaged the impact it would have on the world.

By fuelling his Coalbrookdale foundry with coke rather than wood, the Dudley-born ironmaster enabled the mass-production of metal on a scale never seen before. It was suddenly possible to produce steam engines, machinery, and hand tools on an unprecedented scale. It made the West Midlands the engine house of the world as the Industrial Revolution steamed ahead on the back of the region's rich supply of coal.

How times change. This week, the UK marked another, very different milestone. The seven days up until Wednesday marked the first time since the Industrial Revolution that the country's entire electricity supply has been generated without the use of coal.

Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark hailed the record as a major milestone in creating a greener future.

“Going a week without coal for the first time since the Industrial Revolution is a huge leap forward in our world-leading efforts to reduce emissions," he said.

"But we're not stopping there. To combat climate change and seize on the opportunities of clean growth, we’re phasing out coal entirely by 2025 and building a cleaner, greener energy system.”

Colin Williams, who worked in the mining industry for nearly 30 years, does not seem convinced.

"If global warming is what they say it is, that is very important, but it does seem a bit strange to then start chopping trees down to produce wood pellets," he says. "Surely they are what we need to capture the carbon from the atmosphere?"

The 70-year-old, who worked as an electrical engineer at collieries in Shropshire and Wrexham, argues that coal is also a versatile resource, which can be used to produce both diesel and gas, as it was commonly used until the early 1970s.

"It seems such a waste leaving all that coal underground," he says.

"When they closed Ifton Colliery (near Oswestry), there was 300 years' worth of coal left there, there's about 1,000 years' worth of coal still left around the UK."

Looking back, it seems incredible to think that as recently as the 1980s the Solid Fuel Advisory Service was still running television adverts proclaiming coal to be 'the fuel of the future'.

But of course, the miners' strike of 1974, which brought the country to its knees and Ted Heath's government to an abrupt end, meant that any future administration was going to be wary of placing too much reliance on coal. Concerns about global warming were then the final nail in its coffin. Today coal accounts for less than 10 per of national power output.

But what impact will a coal-free future have on a region which rose to prominence on the back of the coal industry? While the Black Country takes its name from the fact it used to be shaded black on geological maps, the reality is that for most people memories of deep coal-mining in the area belong to the dim-and-distant past.

Baggeridge Colliery in Sedgley, Dudley, was the last pit in the Black Country to close, finally shutting in 1968. While Baggeridge was once reputed to the world's largest coalpit, it was very much the exception to the rule. At the height of the Industrial Revolution there were thought to be as many as 600 coal mines in the Black Country, nearly all small-scale operations on land owned by the Earl of Dudley, who would either lease the sites to local businessmen, or appoint an agent to mine the coal himself.

In Shropshire, the mining continued a little longer. Highley Colliery closed in 1969, but Granville Colliery at Donnington survived until 1979.

Malcolm Smith, now a councillor in Telford, was a third generation miner, and started work at Granville when he was just 15.

He says while he missed the camaraderie that went with mining, he is not sorry that the industry has gone.

"My dad always said 'no son of mine is going down the pit', and I kept my job secret for three weeks before I told him," he recalls.

"It was a bit like being in the Army, in the sense that everybody looked out for one another.

"But I'm not sad that it's gone, I think it's progress, the air is much cleaner now than it used to be.

"I think if you showed a young couple a house, and told them it had coal-fired central heating, it would put them off."

He also thinks that it would be a tough job recruiting people to work in the pits today, when there are so many other more attractive jobs around.

"I don't think young people today would want to do it, not everybody is suited to life underground," he says.

The last pit to close in the Cannock Chase coalfield was Littleton Colliery, which shut in 1993, two years after Lea Hall Colliery, which adjoined Rugeley power station. Deep coal mining in the UK ended with the closure of Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire in December 2015, although open-cast surface mining has continued since then.

It is the move away from coal that led to the closure of Ironbridge power station in 2015, and Rugeley in 2016. Ironbridge, in particular, had come under much criticism from environmentalists, with Friends of the Earth claiming it was the second most polluting power station in the UK. Tighter emissions controls meant restrictions were placed on the number of hours it could operate for, and in 2012 it was converted to use wood pellets rather than coal, further reducing its output.

Rugeley was the last power station to close in the West Midlands, and its owner Engie said the decision was "due to the deterioration in market conditions for UK coal-fired power generation" and was in line with its strategy to move towards a less carbon-intensive energy system.

But while the decline of coal has left many scars on the West Midlands, it may also open up fresh opportunities. Telford & Wrekin Council's solar farm at Wheat Leasows is one example, the wind turbines at Hamstall Ridware, near Lichfield and at Rodbaston in Penkridge are another. Ansaldo Nuclear in Ettingshall, Wolverhampton, is a major player in a form of energy production that never existed in the heyday of coal. The jury is still out as to whether shale gas has a major role to play in the future of Britain's energy policy.

None of these energy sources are without their critics, and nobody truly knows how the growing demand for electricity will be met over the coming decades.

What we can be fairly certain of, though, is that coal won't be a major part of it – and it is crucial that the West Midlands plays a central role in this second industrial revolution if it is to benefit from the same level of prosperity it did during the first.