Natural gas is widely used both as an energy carrier as well as important material for chemical industry. One of the most prospective directions of natural gas utilisation is its usage for the purpose of electricity generation. The natural gas fired combined heat and power plants (CHP) characterise the high efficiency of chemical energy use. For this reason natural gas has been recently more often used for electricity generation purposes. This is also why the role of natural gas will probably rise in future. Hard coal and lignite are dominant in Polish sector of electricity generation. The total electricity production in 2002 was 144,1 TW.h and the share of hard coal and lignite was about 96%. Practically the structure of Polish electricity generation has not changed for the recent 20 years. The only, but not very significant, change is that natural gas has just started to be used for co-generation of electricity and heat. It should be mentioned, however, that the rate of electricity produced from natural in Poland is low - 2,1 TW.h (2002), i.e. only 1,5% of the total electricity generation. The biggest combined heat and power plant that in spite of coal uses also natural gas is Lublin Wrotków. The paper presents short characteristics of the Polish power generation sector with a special stress put on combined heat and power plants based on natural gas. Constrains that prevent from wider scale use of natural gas in the sector are described. The paper demonstrates also the ecological and technical aspects of gas turbines use. It also presents the comparison between structure of electricity production in Poland and in the European Union. Finally, the paper shows the perpective of the development of energy sector and the role of the natural gas in future structure of primary energy mix for the purpose of electricity production.