Poland is a country where power and heat energy production is based on conventional fuel combustion, above all hard coal and lignite. In power plants and combined heat and power plants, fossil fuel combustion results in emitting to the atmosphere first of all SO2, NOx, CO, particulate matter, greenhouse gases for instance N2O and CO2. For many years the Polish power industry has tried to reduce the emission of air contaminants to the atmosphere. The reduction is feasible on account of various methods of emission reduction, which have been advanced and applied for many years. The paper presents conventional fuels used in the Polish professional power industry, as well as the principal emission types occurring there for the last 10 years and the undertaken reduction measures. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.