Clean Energy
Presenting a broad survey of the energy problems facing society over the coming decades and the prospects for their solution, this book emphasizes the importance of developing a strategy for the world's future energy supply.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Clean Energy
Chapter 3: Electricity Generation
Electricity is, without doubt, the most versatile form of energy. It is also one of the cleanest, although it has to be remembered that this is only on account of having transferred any pollution from the point of use to the power station smokestack. There, at least, it is discharged at a considerable height and dissipated over a wide area. Most electricity is generated using fossil fuels, especially coal and gas, although nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy, both make sizable contributions to the world's electricity supply. These latter two energy sources are clean in the sense of not liberating carbon dioxide or other pollutants into the atmosphere.
3.1 Electricity Generation Statistics
Before examining the scale of electricity generation, a word about measurement units is appropriate. The standard unit of domestic electricity supply is the kilowatt-hour (10 3 Wh). When discussing national or international electricity generation, it is conventional to use larger units, i.e. the megawatt-hour, MWh (10 6 Wh); the gigawatt-hour, GWh (10 9 Wh); the terawatt-hour, TWh (10 12 Wh); or even the petawatt-hour, PWh (10 15 Wh). The installed generating capacity of a nation is expressed in megawatts (MW) or gigawatts (GW). For the major countries, the quantity of electricity generated is expressed in TWh.
The total world electricity generation by fuel in 1973 and 2001 is given in Table 3.1.1 Electricity production is 2.5 times more than what it was 28 years ago and now represents 15.6% of the world's energy...
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