The present report was prepared by Dr. Esnam El-Hinnawi of the UN' secretariat on the basis of contributions written by a number of scientists and information compiled by UNEP. It was reviewed by an international panel of experts that met in Warsaw in April, 1978 and revised and finalized according to the comments of the members of the panel. It deals with the environmental impacts of the production, transportation and use of fossil fuels and is the first in a. series of studies an the environmental impacts of different sources of energy, The second report in the series, dealing with the environmental impacts of nuclear energy, is being published, while the third report, on renewable sources of energy, is in preparation. A fourth report concluding this series of studies will aim at a comparative assessment of the environmental impacts of these various sources of energy, and will be published in 1980.