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Electricity Generation from Fossil Fuels

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Conventional Electrical Energy Generation
Over 65% of the world's electrical energy used today is generated by steam turbine generators burning fossil fuels as their source of energy and large scale fossil fuelled plants provide most of the world's base load generating capacity.
The electricity generation process is described in detail in the section about steam turbines. This page considers issues concerning the fuel.
Fuels
Fossil fuelled plants use either coal (60%), oil (10%)or gas (30%) in purpose designed combustion chambers to raise steam. These are all non-renewable resources whose supply will ultimately be exhausted. The energy content of these fuels and their variants is shown on the Energy Resources page
Oil is probably the most convenient fuel and thirty years ago it accounted for 30% of the consumption but it has mostly been replaced by coal as oil prices have risen faster than the price of coal due to insecurities of supply. At the same time, the premium value of oil for transportation and chemical uses, rather than for just burning it to extract its calorific value, has also been recognised.
Coal is the least convenient. Its calorific content, on average, is less than half that of the other two fuels. Handling and transporting it is more difficult and it produces large quantities of residues, ash and greenhouse gases, some of which are toxic, depending on the quality of the coal.
Alternatives to using fossil fuels for raising steam are discussed in the section about steam turbines.
Electricity Generating Plant
Drax Power Station
As a benchmark for comparison, in the UK, one power station, Drax, produces 7% of all the country's electricity. It burns 13 million tons of coal a year in 6 X 660 MW coal fired generators providing a total of 4000 MW capacity.
Plans were in place to use 10% biomass co-firing with coal. This would require 400,000

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