BRITAIN’S power and coal industries suffered another “devastating” blow yesterday when profiteer Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) announced the closure of Ferrybridge Power Station.

Ferrybridge, which burns British and Russian coal, will shut by next March with the loss of 172 directly employed jobs and 200 contract posts.

It was one of a chain of Yorkshire power stations on a “merry-go-round” rail link between mines and power stations generating more than 20 per cent of Britain’s electricity.

But the country’s last three deep coalmines, Kellingley and Hatfield in Yorkshire and Thoresby in Nottinghamshire, all face closure.

SSE said 48-year-old Ferrybridge faces losses of £100 million in the next five years.

However, unions attacked the lack of a coherent energy policy — and warned that without government action the country could face power cuts.

“This is devastating news for Ferrybridge workers at a station that has years of life left to supply electricity at a fraction of the price of other energy suppliers,” said general union GMB national officer Phil Whitehurst.

Technical union Prospect negotiations officer Michael Macdonald  said the closure of Ferrybridge would increase the threat of winter blackouts and could have been avoided with more support for low-carbon technologies.

He said the job losses would hit communities already reeling from the planned closure of Kellingley colliery and would reduce Britain’s safety margin for power production “to virtually zero.”

Unite national officer Kevin Coyne said: “The closure of the power station reinforces the message to ministers that they speed up development of alternative technologies such as carbon capture and storage.”

UK Coal said that Nottinghamshire’s last deep coalmine, Thoresby, would shut in July with the loss of 600 jobs.

The coalition refused a £10 million bail-out on the grounds that it was not “value for money” – despite using billions of pounds to subsidise the nuclear power industry.

National Union of Mineworkers president Nicky Wilson said: “Shutting all our deep pits now is short-sighted and dangerous. We might see that renewables are the future, but right now we rely on coal to keep the lights on.”

Britain imports 50 million tonnes of coal a year, having abandoned at least 200 years of indigenous coal reserves.