[pflanze]

> At the end of the last century, coal was used to generate more than 95% of the UK's energy, but last year it had fallen to 1%.

That looks like an impressive change, even if the coal use hasn't been replaced with renewables. But looking up details, the 95% number doesn't appear to be true:

- "Energy mix of UK"[1] shows no time when coal was above ~55%, and even total fossil fuel use was over 95% in 1965, not around the year 2000. But this may be total energy use, not just for electric (not sure).

- "UK electricity production by source"[2] shows that around the year 2000 fossil fuels made up perhaps about 70% of the mix.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_mix_of_UK.svg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_electricity_production...

[philipkglass]

I wonder if the author was thinking of 1899 as "the end of the last century." It can happen to people who lived much of their lives in the 20th century.

[OJFord]

I was born not that far off the end of the last century and I didn't bat an eyelid at that, heh.

Even weirder is that we are currently in the '20s. That's always going to mean 1920s to me, but I imagine I'm going to have to get used to younger family & news etc. using it to mean 2020s in the not too distant future.

[pflanze]

That sounds plausible. I've sent them a mail.

[Symbiote]

The BBC failing to copy and paste from the press release:

> At the turn of the 20th century, coal supplied over 95% of energy consumed in the UK.

https://www.uniper.energy/united-kingdom/news/gb-railfreight...

[OJFord]

Because that only goes back to 1965 and we've been burning coal since the 19th century..?

[pflanze]

OK, but they wrote "At the end of the last century", which implies towards 2000 not 1900.