Facility that burns fossil fuels to produce electricity
The 5,400 MW Bełchatów Power Station in Poland – one of the world's largest coal-fired power stations.Share of electricity production from fossil fuels
2021 world electricity generation by source. Total generation was 28 petawatt-hours.[1]
Coal (36%)
Natural gas (23%)
Hydro (15%)
Nuclear (10%)
Wind (7%)
Solar (4%)
Other (5%)
A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operates an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.
Fossil fuel power stations provide most of the electrical energy used in the world. Some fossil-fired power stations are designed for continuous operation as baseload power plants, while others are used as peaker plants. However, starting from the 2010s, in many countries plants designed for baseload supply are being operated as dispatchable generation to balance increasing generation by variable renewable energy.[2]
By-products of fossil fuel power plant operation must be considered in their design and operation. Flue gas from combustion of the fossil fuels contains carbon dioxide and water vapor, as well as pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and, for coal-fired plants, mercury, traces of other metals, and fly ash. Usually all of the carbon dioxide and some of the other pollution is discharged to the air. Solid waste ash from coal-fired boilers must also be removed.
Fossil fueled power stations are major emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas which is a major contributor to global warming.
The results of a recent study[3] show that the net income available to shareholders of large companies could see a significant reduction from the greenhouse gas emissions liability related to only natural disasters in the United States from a single coal-fired power plant.
However, as of 2015, no such cases have awarded damages in the United States.
Per unit of electric energy, brown coal emits nearly twice as much CO2 as natural gas, and black coal emits somewhat less than brown.
As of 2019[update], carbon capture and storage of emissions is not economically viable for fossil fuel power stations,[4] and keeping global warming below 1.5 °C is still possible but only if no more fossil fuel power plants are built and some existing fossil fuel power plants are shut down early, together with other measures such as reforestation.[5][6]
^"Yearly electricity data". ember-climate.org. 6 December 2023. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
^"Getting Wind and Sun onto the Grid" (PDF). International Energy Agency. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 December 2018. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
^Heidari, N.; Pearce, J. M. (2016). "A Review of Greenhouse Gas Emission Liabilities as the Value of Renewable Energy for Mitigating Lawsuits for Climate Change Related Damages". Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 55: 899–908. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2015.11.025. S2CID 111165822.
^"Why carbon capture could be the game-changer the world needs". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
^Cite error: The named reference NatGeo2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"The West's Nuclear Mistake". MSN. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
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