Modern Gas-Fired Power Plants

It is well known that the CO2 emissions, only based on the pure conversion of primary resources into electric power, is in natural gas fired power stations much lower than in lignite or hard coal fired ones, simply based on the higher energy content of the resource and the higher combustion temperatures / pressures, which will lead to a higher efficiency of the conversion process. Due to that, German government plans to replace some of the coal fired units by gas fired ones.
The result will be, that the emissions in the German eco balance will decrease, because statistically absolutely correct, only the emissions directly linked to the conversion process is counted in the national eco balance. Unfortunately Germany has not really much natural gas resources. So we have to import it from Norway or Russia by pipeline or US or the Arabic states by ship. Taking into consideration the quite high CO2 emissions caused by exploration and transport of this gas to Germany, the climate relevant global eco balance often is not better than the one from using coal.

CO2-Emissions in kg/MWhPower ConversionExploration and TransportTotal
Lignite93035965
Hard coal73535 –430770 –1165
Gas335290 –850625 –1185