The UK becomes the first major economy to stop burning coal for electricity

Question

The last coal-fired power plant in Britain closed on September 30, 2024, marking Britain as the first country of the Group of Seven (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan) major economies to phase out coal.

Answer 1

Climate change can be controversial, but this claim is a fact. The reliability of CNN is ambiguous, with about half of Americans believing it is a non-credible resource (Statista). This CNN article does not list a specific author but credits the story to "The Associated Press." However, my research found several other articles sharing the same claim. All of these articles were posted within the last four weeks, so they are up-to-date. One particular headline was published by a UK news outlet (BBC) and cites two Climate researchers/scientists as authors. Cross-referencing these publications indicates that the statement is true.

Sources:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/239743/cnns-credibility-in-the-united-states/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/30/nx-s1-5133426/uk-quits-coal-climate-change

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2024/uk-coal-power-exit/

Comments

Thank you for factchecking! A better way of checking the reliability of CNN may be a website like mediabiasfactcheck.com, which regards CNN as having a left-center bias and reporting mostly factual information. This website uses "objective measures and subjective analysis" ("About" page) instead of simply surveying users.

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Your answer and check is well done and entrusts good credibility in the answer. I think it would be even stronger perhaps if you also provided one of your source's sources as a way to further strengthen our trust and credibility in those outlets in supporting or not supporting the validity of this claim. We see the BBC article provide figures and data from the National Grid Electricity System Operator. Perhaps linking and going deeper into these sorts of sources could enhance our trust with the linked news outlets.