If you have read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Story then you would have heard the phrase of getting a lump of coal for Christmas. If you have read Sherlock Holmes, some of the words were about the air because all homes were heated by coal and coal produces smog. If you thought about England for the past 200 years, using coal was part of the fabric of the country.

In an article by Paul Waldie of the Globe and Mail, England’s last coal-fired power station shut down for good at the end of September. This means no coal is used to generate electricity in England. The last coal plant was Ratcliff-on-the-Soar Power Station which has been open since 1967. Its coal-boilers could produce 2,000 megawatts of electricity or enough electricity for 2 million homes. At its peak 3,000 workers worked there, the last days 170 remained.

Coal has been a critical part of the British life since the 1700’s and helped drive the Industrial Revolution. In 1882, the Edison Electric Light Company opened the world’s first coal-fired power station in London.

Up until the 1960’s nearly all of Britain’s energy production relied on coal sourced by hundreds of mines across the country. These mines led to construction of canals and ports to ship the coal from the north to the south of the country.

Last year coal’s share of overall production was 1% of total needs. Wind was producing 30%. Nuclear power was 15% and natural gas at 3%.

Carbon Brief, a Britain-based climate research organization, estimated that from 1882 to the present time, 4.6 billion tonnes of coal were burned, and more than 10.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide was released.

Coal had been declining in usage and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shut down hundreds of mines causing widespread hardship for thousands of miners, which the economic impact still exists today, but it was the right thing to do for the country.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, when a company or service is operated for a long time, people expect it to continue to operate for a long time. However, for many industries things change and once profitable companies are no longer profitable. For your investments, while the stocks remain profitable there is limited work to be done except to collect the dividends, but twice a year you should ask how does the company make profits and what needs to change for the company not to make a profit?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.