It is 140 years since the world’s first coal-fired power station, the Edison Electric Light Station, opened in Holborn, London to power new electric street lighting – just three years after Edison patented the incandescent lightbulb. Now the UK has shut down its last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar in the Midlands.

In the same month, plans for a new coalmine in Cumbria were refused, and UK Steel has published a report concluding that coal is no longer needed for steelmaking as electric arc furnace technology can manufacture all grades of steel, eliminating the need for blast furnaces.

Across Europe, coal is being replaced by renewable energy. The EU hit a new record this year with only a quarter of electricity generated using fossil fuels.

Globally too, a third of the world’s electricity came from renewables, pushing out more and more fossil fuels. Yet we need the world’s biggest coal users, China, India and countries in Southeast Asia to cut their use of the most polluting fuel.

China is, at last, beginning to reduce its notorious reliance on coal. It is still building new coal plants but it is retiring its older inefficient coal power stations. The new coal power plants emit 40 percent less CO2 than the ones they are replacing and are designed to be flexible, quickly powering down or ramping up generation according to demand – China is using coal in the same way that the UK uses gas to generate electricity at times of peak demand when renewables cannot currently generate enough.

At the same time China is building renewables at an astonishing rate. It already has more wind power than any other country, nearly three times as much as the US which ranks second in the world for wind energy. Last year, China installed more solar than the US has in its history.

India still relies on coal for half of its electricity generation but has become the third largest producer of solar power behind only China and the US. Solar is now the cheapest form of energy in the world, and the most affordable energy source for developing countries.

The other technology cutting emissions is electric vehicles. More than half of the EVs on the world’s roads are in China where electric cars are now cheaper than petrol and diesel cars, and the Chinese government has introduced subsidies to encourage drivers to trade in their old fossil fuel-powered cars for electric models.

The International Energy Agency reports that EVs are displacing close to 1.8 million barrels of oil every day. We are also seeing the first closures of oil refineries, including Grangemouth in Scotland and three refineries in China.

All the carbon dioxide emitted since the Edison Electric Light Station is still in the atmosphere and will continue to warm the planet for centuries. Fossil fuels ushered in our modern world, but now our future wellbeing will be determined by the speed at which the world brings the fossil fuel era to an end.