Fuel oil pollution control and additional maintenance required after burning it often outweigh the low cost of the fuel. Burning fuel oil, particularly residual fuel oil, produces uniformly higher carbon dioxide emissions than natural gas. Heavy fuel oils continue to be used in the boiler "lighting up" facility in many coal-fired power plants. This use is approximately analogous to using kindling to start a fire. Without performing this act it is difficult to begin the large-scale combustion process. The chief drawback to residual fuel oil is its high initial viscosity, particularly in the case of No. 6 oil, which requires a correctly
Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert preserved, but the solar industry is mainly interested in areas of the western desert, "where the sun burns hotter and there is easier access to transmission lines", said Kenn J. Arnecke of "FPL Energy", a view shared by many industry executives. Concentrating solar plants in the Mojave Desert have brought up issues of water use, because concentrating solar power plants with wet-cooling systems have high water-consumption intensities compared to other types of electric power plants; only fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture and storage may have higher water intensities. A 2013 study comparing various sources of electricity found that the median water