A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News.

A Conservative Party in transition will arrive in Birmingham this weekend for its first conference in opposition for 15 years and with its new leader still to be decided. It’s set to be a more muted affair this year: there’s no leader’s address, no Boris Johnson, and the Shadow Cabinet are delivering speeches in the knowledge they may soon be out of a job when the new regime begins next month. The contest to replace Rishi Sunak will overshadow much of the activity at conference as the four remaining candidates jostle to convince members and fellow MPs they deserve to be in the final two later this month.

Britain becomes the first G7 nation to phase out coal power on Monday (September 30) when the country’s last coal-fired power plant ceases operations, bringing an end to an industry that dates back to the late 19^th century and employed over a million people at its peak in the 1920s. The 125 staff working at the power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire will stay on to decommission the site for the next two years, with plans to turn it into a green energy hub once the iconic cooling towers are demolished. While the UK’s plans for Net Zero have been the subject of heated political debate – former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was criticised for stalling on Britain’s climate change commitments while Labour’s pledge to have the country running on clean power by 2030 has been criticised by both Conservatives and the GMB union – the coal phase-out is a remarkable success story. As recently as 2012, nearly coal generated nearly 40% of power in the UK, but that had fallen to 2% by 2019 as renewable energy became a cheaper alternative and wind and solar power generation grew. The Paris Climate Agreement calls on all OECD countries to phase out coal by 2030, with non-OECD countries following by 2040.