Beneath the distinctive grey curve of a coal plant cooling tower, the yellow of two JCB diggers is stark against a plane of black. For almost fifty years workers at the Drax mega-site in North Yorkshire have shovelled piles of coal, as tall as houses, alongside its 15-storey boilers.

These coal piles are not as big as they used to be. Today the mounds are smaller and the yard flatter; visual evidence, if it were needed, that the UK’s energy system is changing. And Drax along with it.

For decades Drax has embodied the British approach to industry and energy. The construction of the energy giant began in the late 1960s after the discovery of the Selby coalfield. Since then it has steadily and reliably produced almost 8pc of the nation’s electricity from its 2,500-acre site by burning the millions of tons of coal delivered directly to the site by train every year. But ahead of the Government’s looming ban on coal-fired power in the next decade Drax is weaning itself off the black stuff. The power plant consumed more than 9m tons of coal in 2011. Last year its coal use was just 2.7m tons, sourced mostly from Colombian mines.