Unfortunately, while hydropower offered great energy benefits, it does leave rise for environmental concern. River fragmentation from reservoir damming and loss in biodiversity from habitat change are a couple examples of the potential threats that new hydropower facility construction pose to the very same ecosystems that renewable energy development are aimed to protect. All hope is not lost, as this project sought to better quantify the global potential for increasing hydropower with environmentally benign alternatives. In addition to dams used for hydropower, there are hundreds of thousands of dams that are already constructed for different societal purposes (flood control, irrigation, recreation, etc.) and have already incurred a large part of their environmental impacts. These non-powered dams provide opportunity for retrofitting facilities for hydropower capacity with the addition of turbines. Although there are still some environmental concerns with these additions (ex. fish impingement and power transmission infrastructure), they do provide an opportunity for more immediate solutions to increased energy demands and needs – particularly in many regions of low development indices and biological hotspots in need of conservation from new construction. This project sought to quantify this potential using a spatially comprehensive global inventory of geolocated dams used for purposes other than hydropower, and augment these results with modelled estimates of small, unmapped dams. We also examined increases in hydropower potential from efficiency upgrades at existing hydro-plants. These opportunities afford non-invasive increases in hydropower in populated areas neighboring biodiversity hot spots. Overall, we estimate that these contributions could potentially provide up to a 10% increase to current global hydropower, potentially reducing the costs of construction and transmission, all while offsetting impacts to biodiversity and river ecosystems incurred by planned new hydropower construction. As illustrated below, 15 regions of the globe all had potential MW contribution from mapped NPDs, facility upgrades, and modelled unmapped estimates (TCM and Pareto) determined. We also conducted case studies in the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong river basins to look at regions of biological overlap with future construction, existing NPDs and existing hydro-plants (see the figure below). In my mind, this work seeks to rectify the relationship between pursing energy development and ecological conservation. These pursuits do not have to be mutually exclusive – and in fact, these findings can actually provide unique opportunities for innovative solutions to development. To me, a sustainable future is one of optimized systems – both engineered and natural. Environmental stewardship does not have to come at the expense of development.
Be on the lookout for this work and more on our Publications page. If you want to learn more about myself or other members of our lab, check out the People page! Feel free to engage with us on this blog or via email! Thanks for reading! |
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May 2024
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