hydro

The following post was co-authored by Tom Russo and Kleinschmidt Principal, Kelly Schaeffer.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) could play a lead role in increasing the number of hydropower projects licensed at its navigation and flood control dams. The biggest challenge to realizing this is not the lack of legislation or new regulations, but rather the lack of experience and familiarity with the review of hydropower project proposals. The Trump Administration’s penchant for results over process may provide added incentives to both the Corps and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to cooperate and facilitate more hydropower development at Corps dams. Successfully implementing a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between these two agencies is the key to success. Read more

Recently, a colleague doing work for the United Nations Development Programme in Russia requested me to send her the best guidance available on planning international hydropower projects. She was attempting to minimize impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. While I have been away from Hydropower for a while, I was really hard pressed to find current documents that would help her. Most reports were too general and few, if any, talked about planning and regulating hydropower projects, which can last 50 years or longer. I found this difficult to understand despite the wealth of experience in the U.S. and Canada in siting and regulating hydropower. 

I quickly realized that in the hydro arena, we were still grappling with environmental, regulatory and social issues. The same is true for siting natural gas and renewable energy. However, the stakes are higher today since the World Bank Group and the Asian Infrastructure Bank are investing in hydropower in to spur economic development, address Climate Change and move countries away from fossil fuels. So I dusted off three publications below that should help both developing and developed countries to better plan and manage their hydropower and other energy projects. Here's a short explanation of each:

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