Economy development and people's living conditions need to protect the energy supply adequate in quan- tity and quality. Identified reserves of fossil fuels which are the basis for power industry in the world today are still considerable when assessing their consumption at the present level. Very large reserves of energy are connected with different forms of renewable energy. There is many different ways to provide for people's energy needs in particulate countries. Significant increase in natural gas consumption can be observed since 1975 year. This process takes place mainly in industrialised countries. Model of distributed electricity generation at the cost of decrease of conventional method of energy production seems to be the fundamental direction of energy industry development. The world will not be able to solve the problem of electricity supplying without further development of nuclear power. During last few years in industrialised countries more stress is put on renewable sources of energy. However, there is a lack of reliable and complete data on quantity of renewable energy produced world-wide annually. Harmful impact of power industry on environment is one of the most significant problems in global power industry. There is a lot activities undertaken in many countries in the world towards better energy management. As a result - energy productivity increases and energy-consumption of GDP decreases systematically. Improvement of effective energy utilisation should be the priority in Poland's energy policy. Nowadays, Polish power industry should be adjusted - structurally and proprietarily - to co-operate with power sector in the European Union countries with the special regard to energy market liberalisation.