peter green wrote:
> From what I can gather very little electricity production comes from
> oil anyway because oil is the most expensive of the fossil fuels
> already. Afaict the big sources are coal,  natural gas, dam based hydro
> and nuclear.
>
> Dam based hydro is a very nice source of power in terms of running
> clenliness and output control but availible sites for new installations
> are very very limited and the inital installation is a political and
> environemntal nightmare (forests rotting underwater produce a lot of
> polloution).
>
> Most other renewables generate on thier own relatively unpredicatable
> schedules making them a grid operators nightmare, a small ammount of
> sources like that is tolerable but ultimately unless storage costs come
> down dramatically it will be very difficult to run a whole grid off them.

Here is some hard data:

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/graphicsandcharts/generationstatistics/

The following supports Peter's assertion regarding oil vs coal for 
electricity generation:

U.S. Electricity Generation Fuel Shares (1971 - 2006)
http://tinyurl.com/2gjm2o

Coal produces by far the worst emissions, and accounts for nearly half of 
all electricity production.

Regarding hydro, from what I've read, besides the fact that it's destructive 
to the environment, there just aren't any suitable spots left.

Vitaliy

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