Advantages and Disadvantages of Fossil Fuels

In the United States, 42 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by burning coal as coal is cheap and plentiful.

Need Step Main Point: Fossil fuel electricity generators used to be our best friends, but now they are doing us many harms.

Nowadays, coal is still one of the greatest used energy to generate power in so many countries. Using coal in electricity generation is 93% in South African, 87% in Poland, 79% in China, 78% in Australia, 45% in USA, 41% in Germany, 58% in Israel etc. (Coal & Electricity) From the data above, even the developed countries use coal to generate power as the main source. In many developed countries, energy generation is still based on coal as a long-term source. In recent years, although there is an increasing number of equipment using gas and wind to generate the power, it is still lower than the proportion of coal-fired power generation. The reason why most countries choose coal as a main source to generate electricity, is that there are many advantages in using coal to generate electricity. First of all, coal is the

Coal power is the cheapest fuel to power the ever growing population with Australian mining industry still putting in billions of dollars into a vast amount of coal projects never the less coal power is a fossil fuel, a fuel which takes hundreds of year to form so the future of coal is undetermined. Coal is a reliable power source but one of the many concern with coal is the mining process used to remove it from the ground. Ecological effects are developing worries for the industry, with the carbon emissions possibly contributing to global warming.

Research suggests that coal is an energy source for the future because it is stable and reliable with abundant reserves. Coal is the most affordable and efficient fuel source used to produce power, and because of new technologies, coal can be extracted and used to produce energy more efficiently and cleaner for decades to

Coal is very inexpensive. This helps the U.S. because we won't ave to spend a lot of money

Although there is a common misconception that fossil fuels will cause pollution, mankind should rely on fossil fuels for energy not only because they are cheap and plentiful, but also because alternative energy is very unreliable.

Accounting for most of the world’s source of energy is fossil fuels. These sources are

Even with the quantity of fossil fuels dwindling due to human consumption, coal has remained one of the cheapest, reliable sources of electricity, natural gas, diesel fuel, and steel

Imagine your daily life and how much technology is integrated into it, now, even if you don’t think that you use a lot of technology, remember that most of what we use today in our daily lives, need some sort of electricity to make it, or run it. We live in a world that is almost dependent upon electricity, modern life is unimaginable without electricity. Coal produces almost half of the electricity we use. There is much controversy about coal and why we rely on it so heavily. The question that emerges from this controversy is “should we be mining and processing as much coal as we do on a daily basis, and should we downscale, or find alternatives?”

as it is a form of fossil fuel that can power plants for some countries

Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel available to humans, there is no argument. There is an estimated 3.9 trillion short tons of coal in the USA alone, and that would be only 21% of the entire world's coal (EIA, 2017). That is a massive amount of coal, but no matter how much coal there is, the human race is using it at a rate much faster than the speed at which it can be produced in nature, therefore the resource is bound to be depleted unless current practices are changed. With the current rate at which coal is used in the world, it will only be around for another 50-56 years (Chiras, 2016). Since it will only be around for roughly 50 years, if usage rates continue as they are, it can not be a major energy source for the next 100 years. Not only will coal just simply not last for the next hundred years when used as is, it is also not an environmentally friendly way to produce energy. Coal is the leading air pollutant in the united states with the typical uncontrolled coal plant emitting 3.5 million tons of CO2, 14,100 tons of SO2 per year, 10,300 tons of NOx per year (UCSUSA, 2015). These major air pollutants can result in acid rain, destruction of the ozone layer, and a wide variety of human health problems. Coal also emits many more heavy metals and solid particulates into the air every year. These substances pollute the Earth’s atmosphere and result in many problems. Coal produces a great amount of energy, but it also produces a great amount of pollutants that get released into the atmosphere and the environment, therefore it can not be a major source of energy for the next 100 years or more problems will occur. Aside of air pollution from using coal, the extraction and production of coal has adverse effects on the environment too. Surface mining produces several environmental hazards and releases a large quantity of pollutants through erosion and runoff. When land is stripped away to reveal a coal seam, not only does it destroy habitats and quality land, it increases erosion and causes a substantial amount of the materials and sediment to be carried into nearby streams. In Kentucky for example, where contour strip mines were located, the amount of erosion grew about 372 times the original, .18 tons per

A fossil-fueled power plant relies on the ancient technology of fire to produce heat. According to Harold L. Flescher “Today, almost 50% of electricity in the United States comes from coal, almost 20% from natural gas, almost 20% from nuclear and 7% from hydroelectric. That adds up to over 95% of the United States electrical energy generation capability. Everything else, including solar and wind, today contributes less than 5% of U.S. electrical needs” (2). It is believed that our country and many others will continue to use coal and other fossil fueled plants as a main source for electricity for another couple of generations until we eventually graduate from the idea of using fossil fueled power plants (Flescher 2). The structure developed

Everyday in U.S., immense amount of fossil fuel is burned. Fossil fuels are fuel formed by natural processes, such as decomposition of buried dead organisms. Fossil fuel release carbon dioxide when they are burned which adds to the greenhouse effect and increases global warming. The way we can help the environment and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide is by replaying fossil fuels with solar and wind sources for electric power generations in the U.S.

In today’s society fossil fuels are the primary source of energy for most of the industrialized world. Utilizing fossil fuels has been very important to the industrialization development throughout the world. Industrialization in many parts of the world, energy has been needed at a much higher density then before and fossil fuels have fulfilled that need. Coal, gas, and oil are the three major sources of fossil fuels in the world. Despite other means of energy such as wind power, hydroelectric power etc., fossil fuels are still the main source of energy across the continent. Fossils fuels are critical to the function of society. “Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) are the dominant source of energy today and will be for decades to come.” (Everett, B. October).