Everyone in the energy industry is suffering as crude oil prices have slumped. But some oil producing countries are hurting more than others. In the United Kingdom, it costs $52.50 to produce a Duke Energy has been using coal to produce electricity in the Carolinas since 1911. Those first coal-fired plants (in Greensboro, N.C., and Greenville, S.C.) only supplemented the company’s use of hydroelectricity. In the 1920s, the growing demand for electricity began to outstrip the availability of hydroelectric generation. Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its delivery to end users (transmission, distribution, etc.) or its storage (using, for example, the pumped-storage method).