COMPARISON OF EMISSION RATES OF POWER GENERATION USING COAL OR BIOMASS AS FUEL

摘要

Renewable energy sources, such as biomass produced as waste by the agriculture and the forestry became very fashionable and preferred fuel in power generation in numerous parts of the world e.g. in Hungary. Carbon-dioxide emission could be considered one of its main reason. It is generally supposed, if biomass is used for heating and electric power generation, the emission in question cannot be higher than the quantity the plants captured and used during their whole life. Although it is not clearly true, this argument was taken into consideration when international and domestic regulation was contributed. As a result of this attitude and regulation, even major coal-fired power plants began to use biomass in power generation beside coal. Furthermore this attitude probably hits the future of coal mining to a great extent. A comparison of emission rates of combusting biomass in question and coal as fuels in electric power generation. Beside emission rates, further factors, such as area occupied by coal mining and land use of the agriculture and of the forestry for this purpose, production capacity, questions and risks of storage, costs and possible methods of transportation, safety and risk of providing power plants with fuel, different economic facts, etc. are taken into consideration as well. As a consequence of this comparison a more sophisticated point of view can be obtained, which is significantly more advantageous for utilization and mining of coal and other fossil fuels in electric power generation.