BLYTH, England—Coal from mines around this northeastern English port town made the U.K. an industrial and imperial superpower in the 19th century. In the 21st, the country has all but ditched the fuel.
By kicking its coal habit, the U.K. has charted a route for the U.S. and other nations seeking to reduce carbon emissions. British governments made it prohibitively expensive to burn coal while prodding investors to plow tens of billions of dollars into renewables, energy executives and financiers say.
