IS CHINA’S HYDROELECTRIC REVOLUTION

AS GREEN AS IT SOUNDS?
China is pursuing an ambitious programme of hydroelectric expansion, with a series
of ‘mega-dams’ on the way even bigger than the controversial Three Gorges project.
But are there signs that this kind of hydropower might actually make climate change
even worse?

“When I visited China’s Three Gorges Dam in 2009, I certainly felt respect for an
impressive feat of human ingenuity,” says Peter Bosshard, interim executive director
of environmental campaign group International Rivers.“At the same time, it was
depressing to see how the dam had reduced the once mighty Yangtze River to a
stagnant garbage pond. Near the dam site, the debris is so dense that you can
practically walk across it.”

It’s a startling description of the Three Gorges dam, but for Bosshard it’s just the tip
of the iceberg. “This is only the most visible symbol of a project that has upended
the complex ecosystem and fragile geology of the whole Yangtze Valley,” he says.
For 30 years, International Rivers has been campaigning to protect waterways and
their ecologies and communities from the building of new dams, but China’s
enthusiasm for large-scale hydroelectric projects has taken their concerns to a new
level.

Apart from
displacing more
than one million
people and
reportedly being
responsible for the
extinction of the
Baiji dolphin, the
Three Gorges has
become the focus
of a complicated
scientific
controversy that
presents new
challenges for
policy makers,
researchers, and engineers alike: that when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, hydroelectric dams may not be as green as they first seem.
MEET THE GIGATONNE

The first hydroelectric

dams were built in the late
19th century, and were
considered a clean and
efficient form of energy
production nearly a
century before climate
change became a global
concern. Leading the
push for hydroelectric
power were Canada and
the United States, with the
US home to more than 2,400 dams powering hydroelectric plants across 34 states.
They range from small dams providing power to local communities to vast, iconic
structures like the Hoover Dam. Only in the latter half of the 20th century were
these dam-building efforts eclipsed by China and Brazil, both in number and scale.
Last year, Microsoft founder and mega philanthropist Bill Gates posted a stunning
infographic on his blog that gave a sense of scale to China’s gargantuan industrial
growth: in just three years - between 2011 and 2013 - the country used 6.6
gigatonnes of concrete. That was more than the US had used during the entire 20th
century, a ‘mere’ 4.5 gigatonnes.
The Three Gorges Dam consumed just a tiny percentage of that total - about
65 million tonnes - but that was still nearly 10 times as much as the construction of
the Hoover Dam, together with 460,000 tonnes of steel, enough to build 63 Eiffel
Towers.
In 2006, China overtook the US for the first time as the world’s largest producer of
greenhouse gases, and while coal still remains the main source for fulfilling
skyrocketing energy demands, there’s a very serious and tangible political desire
to shift the balance. As such, China is investing hard in hydroelectric, and the Three
Gorges seems to be just a stepping stone.
In a bid to reduce its carbon footprint, China aims to generate 120GW of renewable
energy by 2020, mostly from new hydropower plants on the Salween, Upper
Mekong, the Yarlung Tsangpo, as well as more development further up the
Yangtze.
It’s the equivalent of building one new Three Gorges Dam every year for the next
five years. According to Bosshard, it’s more hydropower than any other country has
built in its entire history.
The Three
Gorges Dam
consists of almost
as much
controversy as
concrete. The
region has been
famed for its
biodiversity, with
600 known
species of plant,
more than half of
them
endangered. The
Yangtze River is
not just home to 300 different species of fish, but is also a vital element in an
ecosystem that supports hundreds more species along its banks.
Then there is the problem of water pollution. The Yangtze’s fate has been closely
linked to China’s industrial revolution, both as a water source for manufacturing
and a dumping ground for waste. Now that the river is even less able to disperse
pollutants quickly and effectively, scientists say the quality of the water upstream
is degrading rapidly. Reports claim over 1,600 abandoned factories were flooded
as part of creating the dam’s vast reservoir, emptying unknown amounts of toxins
into the river.
The human and cultural cost of the construction has also been unprecedented. The
reservoir submerged 13 cities, 140 towns and over 1,200 villages. More than 1.3
million people were displaced. Over 1,300 archaeological sites, monuments, and
temples were lost to the rising waters.
Yet, for Beijing at least, all this seems a small price to pay for the benefits the Three
Gorges Dam is expected to deliver. With its 32 state-of-the-art turbines, the dam is
the world’s largest power producing facility, capable of generating 22,500MW of
electricity - more than 28 times the output of Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear
power plant, the largest of its kind in the world. And the dam’s annual output is said
to be the equivalent to burning 50 million tonnes of coal, which would release 100
million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Squeezing the ecological balloon

Things, however, may not be that simple. Since the early 2000s there have been
growing concerns in the scientific community that cast doubt on the green
credentials of hydroelectric dams. They worry about the ‘reservoir emissions
problem’, which could have potentially devastating consequences for climate
change. Most hydroelectric power comes from driving turbines with the controlled
flow of dammed water, in effect creating a store of potential energy above the dam
through the building of a large reservoir. These reservoirs are made by flooding a
large area of land around the upstream river, and more often than not this land was
either heavily forested or previously used for agriculture.
There are two problems with that; an important mechanism for absorbing CO2 is
lost, and the plants and vegetation killed by the flooding decay and their stored
carbon is converted into methane and even more CO2 - both greenhouse gases.
Methane is much worse than CO2 when it comes to trapping heat. “In extreme
cases, these emissions are much higher than the emissions from a fossil fuel plant
with the same generating capacity,” says Bosshard. “The Balbina Dam in the
Brazilian Amazon, for example, emits 12 times as many greenhouse gases as a
coal-fired power plant of the same size.”
 Not all researchers
share Bosshard’s
concerns. “On the
whole, I think
reservoir emissions
from hydropower
dams are minuscule
compared to fossil
fuel generation and
its significance is
exaggerated in
many people’s minds,” says Bradford Sherman, an ecologist at the University of
Canberra in Australia and dam engineering expert, whose interest in reservoir
emissions dates back 15 years. “Reservoir GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions are
highly site-specific and it is hugely misleading to extrapolate from one reservoir to
the next.”
Sherman visited the Three Gorges in 2012, and is more upbeat about what he saw.
“I was somewhat surprised and reassured as I learned about the steps to minimise
the harm to the environment and water quality in the reservoir,” he says. “We
sampled only a very small part of the reservoir but we tried to find areas that would
be high emitters. We spent a lot of time surveying the tributaries that we could
access, using hydro-acoustic methods to detect the presence of bubble plumes,
and were very surprised by how few bubble-emitting sites were observed.
He says he spotted only “a single bubble event in many dozens of measurements”
and argues that this was much less than he had observed in Australian water
reservoirs. “If I had to guess, I would classify Three Gorges as a relatively low-
emitting reservoir because of its depth and the steep topography, but more
measurements are required along the length of the reservoir, especially upstream,
to make an accurate estimate.”
 Methane for electricity
What Sherman highlights when he
mentions depth and topography is
perhaps the most pressing issue
when it comes to constructing new
dams - the placement and
preparation of reservoirs before
construction even begins. Avoiding
flooding heavily forested or
agricultural areas will obviously limit
the amount of vegetation at risk.
Amy Townsend-Small, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio,
recommends especially avoiding farmland. “Our work indicates that building
reservoirs in agricultural areas may lead to increased emissions of methane from
the reservoir surface,” she explains, because the excess of nutrients and nitrates
in the soil - introduced artificially during agriculture - may compound the issue.
She also says that designing dams to draw water from nearer the surface - and
avoiding water near the decomposing plant matter at the bottom of the reservoir -
may help. “There is some indication that methane emissions may be reduced by
using surface water, not bottom water, to supplement streamflow below the dam,
but this needs to be investigated further,” she says.
Sherman adds that we now know a lot more about the processes that drive GHG
emissions from reservoirs: “I would expect that this understanding is incorporated
into the assessment of potential hydropower dams, so that only the more suitable
sites from a GHG emissions perspective are considered.”
However, what if we could turn this problem into an opportunity - and capture the
methane produced by a reservoir to generate electricity? It’s certainly a possibility,
according to a team of researchers from Brazil, led by Fernando Ramos. They
suggest trapping methane emitted by the reservoir using a system of catamaran
style barges, which would separate the methane from the water and compress it
for easy storage in tanks. From there it could be transported to methane-burning
power stations to produce electricity. Although methane is one of the most
dangerous greenhouse gases, when burned it supplies surprisingly clean energy,
releasing 29 per cent less carbon than oil and 43 per cent less than coal. So far,
the work of Ramos’ team has yet to leave the lab. However, Townsend-Small is
dubious whether it will work: “The methane emissions are diffuse and spread out
over time, and the reservoirs have large surface areas. It wouldn’t be cost effective
to trap the methane and purify it for commercial use.”
The reservoir emissions issue, though, isn’t going to go away. “Hydropower
remains the cleanest, in terms of GHG emissions, of the very large scale
centralised electricity generating technologies as far as I’m aware,” says Sherman.
“It’s no contest when compared with thermal energy sources as a general rule.”
But International Rivers’ Bosshard remains sceptical. “Mega-projects such as the
Three Gorges demonstrate that the benefits of large dams are almost always over-
estimated, while the costs and impacts are under-estimated… We can’t sacrifice
the arteries of the planet to save her lungs, particularly when better solutions such
as wind and solar are now widely available.”

A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN?

Dams, whether large or small,

are not immune from damage
and decay - and if they fail, the
impact can be immense.
The earliest known large dam
was built around 5,000 years
ago, in what is now Jordan. But
building a dam is a complex feat
of engineering, and despite
humankind’s centuries of
experience they can still fail - like
in 1864, when the Dale Dyke
Dam in Sheffield broke, with 244
people losing their lives.
And the larger the dam, the
bigger the potential damage.
When the Banqiao Reservoir
Dam in China failed 40 years
ago, it killed an estimated
171,000 people, and left 11
million homeless. Today, dams everywhere are regularly assessed for potential
risks, and most have early warning systems to alert people who might be in the
path of a flood when it breaks.
The impact of a dam collapse depends on the structure’s height, reservoir volume
and the nature of the area downstream. But today’s mega-dams are not disasters
waiting to happen, says Tim Hill, supervising civil engineer at Mott MacDonald.
“Large dams, such as the Three Gorges, are designed to the highest international
standards and the likelihood of such a dam failing is extremely remote,” he says.
The everyday realities of hydropower dams

A 1GW gas or coal fired power station can produce around 1GW continuously for
the year, except when out of service for maintenance.
But knowing a hydro station is 1GW capacity does not tell you very much about its
annual generation; that depends on the flow in the river, which can be highly
seasonal, and the extent to which that flow can be regulated by storing water
behind the dam and releasing it as required for generation. Schemes can also be
multi-purpose in nature, with some of the water being retained for agricultural
irrigation.
The optimisation of a hydro project thus depends on many factors, not least the
environmental and social impacts of inundating river valleys, which has driven a
trend towards less storage of water. Some 1GW stations are sized to supply that
capacity for short periods during demand peaks, whereas others, also 1GW, may
be designed for baseload application.
Hydro stations need almost no maintenance that takes them offline. Lives are also
very long, with the civil engineering works lasting more than 100 years typically.
Mechanical and electrical generating equipment is then refurbished or replaced
every 25-40 years.
Hydropower has other advantages - low carbon, and the ability to control its
electrical output, which makes it ideal for meeting demand peaks, or for filling in
gaps when solar or possibly wind power are not generating. It is also generally fairly
low cost compared to other low carbon energy sources, and in many countries
reduces the need to spend scarce foreign exchange importing fuel.
But it’s got its disadvantages. High upfront capital requirements, long development
periods, and the impacts of inundation are problems for large projects.