Tag Archive for: Hydropower

Environmental Disaster or a Key to Clean Energy Future? A New Twist on Hydropower

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Steve Lowe gazed into a gaping pit in the heart of the California desert, careful not to let the blistering wind send him toppling over the edge.

The pit was a bustling iron mine once, churning out ore that was shipped by rail to a nearby Kaiser Steel plant. When steel manufacturing declined, Los Angeles County tried to turn the abandoned mine into a massive landfill. Conservationists hope the area will someday become part of Joshua Tree National Park, which surrounds it on three sides.

Lowe has a radically different vision.

With backing from NextEra Energy — the world’s largest operator of solar and wind farms — he’s working to fill two mining pits with billions of gallons of water, creating a gigantic “pumped storage” plant that he says would help California get more of its power from renewable sources, and less from fossil fuels.

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Hydropower Dams in Tropics Found to Harm Fish

/in , /by /Courthouse News Service by Carson McCullough

Researchers warn that future freshwater damming efforts could present significant dangers to aquatic life if allowed to proceed as planned, potentially threatening the habitats of up to 10,000 fish species.

A study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details how a large team of environmental researchers have charted out the potential consequences of both present and future damming efforts of freshwater sources.

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Study: Dam Removal Would Cost $2.3B, Jeopardize Regional Economies

/in , /by /The Daily News by Mallory Gruben

A new study commissioned by an association of river commercial groups says removing the four Lower Snake River dams to improve salmon runs would cost $2.3 billion over the next 30 years, boost state carbon emissions and jeopardize already fragile local and regional economies.

“Dam breaching extremists talk about how easy and inexpensive it would be to compensate Washington, Oregon and Idaho businesses and residents if the lower Snake River dams were removed,” PNWA Executive Director Kristin Meira said Monday.

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Study: Switching to Solar And Wind Power Will Reduce Groundwater Use

/in , , /by /Courthouse News Service (Pasadena, Calif.)by Carson McCullough

Increasing energy output from solar and wind power could result in less groundwater usage and more drought-resistant environments, according to a study published Wednesday in Nature Communications.

Researchers found solar and wind power, often viewed as valuable tools to help reduce reliance on fossil fuels and combat air pollution, can also lead to significantly less groundwater usage in areas where water management is most crucial, such as California. These reductions in spent groundwater, according to the study, have the potential to increase resistance to severe, long-lasting droughts.

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Opinion: The Promise of Small Hydropower and Holistic Renewable Energy Grid

/in , /by /The Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Virginia)by Tamim Younos Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

At present, solar and wind energy are highly promoted as renewable energy technologies — clean technologies in terms of their carbon footprint. However, the most prominent renewable energy source for generating electricity is hydropower. The history of hydropower for generating electricity in the U.S. goes back to late 19th century.

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Opinion: A Fresh Look At The Future Of Hydropower Requires That We See Clearly Its Past and Present

/in , , /by /The Hill (Washington D.C.)by WM. Robert Irvin

As society grapples with climate change and the challenge of decarbonizing the national energy grid, proponents increasingly hold up hydropower as an indispensable part of the solution, touting it as “clean, green energy.” They decry what they see as the unfair federal and state tax and regulatory advantages of wind and solar. In a recent editorial arguing for “a fresh look,” the National Hydropower Association declared that hydropower “isn’t being discussed as a clean energy solution by the environmental community” despite that it is dependable, renewable and “protects and preserves our natural ecosystems.”

In fact, American Rivers and many others in the environmental community acknowledge hydropower’s potential role in a decarbonized energy future, but a fresh look at that potential requires a clear view of hydropower’s past and present.

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Hydropower Giant Bonneville Power Is Going Broke

/in , /by /E&E Newsby Jeremy P. Jacobs

Nearly a century ago, America embarked on a great social experiment in the Pacific Northwest, charging up the Columbia River and erecting dams.

It worked. Construction jobs pulled the country out of the Great Depression. Cheap electricity spurred the growth of cities like Seattle, Portland and Boise. And hydropower fueled the military effort to defeat the spread of fascism in World War II.

Now the system is buckling.

The Bonneville Power Administration, the independent federal agency that sells the electricity produced by the dams, is careening toward a financial cliff.

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Enormous Montana Pumped Hydro Project Gets Danish Investment

/in , , /by /PV Magazineby William Driscoll

A 400 MW pumped hydro project in Montana has received an equity investment from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP).

While the technical potential of closed-loop pumped hydro storage is an estimated 500,000 sites worldwide, the cost of pumped hydro, especially as it compares to the cost of battery storage, remains an issue.

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OPINION: Hydropower Is A Clean Energy Source. Why Don’t California Lawmakers Grasp This?

/in , , /by /San Diego Union-Tribune

The reality of climate change is properly framed in potentially apocalyptic terms. Without cleaner energy, the atmosphere will keep heating, and extreme weather will be more common, disruptive and deadly. Hence the need for an “all of the above” clean-energy strategy. Yet too many environmentalists oppose hydropower and nuclear power. These energy sources have their downsides — the impact on aquatic life and nuclear waste storage among them — but if climate change is an existential threat, opposing their use doesn’t make any sense.

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OPINION: Why California Eliminating Hydropower Makes No Sense

/in , /by /The Mercury Newsby Dan Walters

When California embarked on its quest to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as a global model to stave off climate change, its first target was the state’s electric power industry. A series of ever-tightening decrees required utilities to shift from coal, natural gas and other carbon.based sources to a “renewable portfolio,” eventually reaching 100 percent non-carbon sources by mid-century.

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