Can modernized hydropower help in climate crisis?
Conservationists in California and across the West are deeply skeptical of hydropower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s a long history of government agencies damming spectacular canyons, choking off rivers, obliterating fish populations and cutting off access to Indigenous peoples.
But despite the environmental damage they’ve done, many dams also generate electricity that is free of planet-warming carbon emissions. Tearing down dams can revitalize ecosystems, but it can also contribute to a climate crisis that is making rivers around the world drier in some cases, more prone to flooding in others, and in many cases hotter and more polluted.
So it was a big deal when several major environmental groups announced last year that they were working with the hydropower industry to find common ground after decades of conflict.
The environmental groups involved in those conversations — including American Rivers, the Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the World Wildlife Fund — saw an opportunity to upgrade some existing dams to generate more power, while also tearing down older dams and making others more fish-friendly. Hydropower companies, recognizing that the era of building big new dams is largely over, were open to that kind of deal, too.
Now, conservationists and the industry have some specific recommendations for the Biden administration. Their $63-billion proposal includes $18 billion for safety improvements at potentially hazardous dams, $15 billion to fund the removal of 2,000 dams, and $24 billion to support federal agencies, in part by helping them produce larger amounts of clean electricity at existing hydropower facilities. It comes as President Biden urges Congress to pass a generational investment in clean energy infrastructure to create jobs and fight climate change.
“If we’re going to have the dams for f lood control or irrigation, we might as well use that infrastructure for carbon-free generation at the same time,” said Malcolm Woolf, chief executive of the National Hydropower Assn.
Part of the argument for hydroelectric power is that water can be sent through turbines relatively quickly when the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing, helping to balance out solar and wind power. But many dams weren’t designed to do that, Woolf said, and federal investments could help those facilities modernize and become more flexible .
Modernization could also mean replacing old hydropower turbines with “aerating” models that add muchneeded oxygen to water being discharged downstream, or potentially with newly developed turbines that allow fish to pass through safety.
For Tom Kiernan, chief executive of American Rivers, the key thing about the $63-billion proposal is that it’s not designed to be spliced into pieces by lawmakers who might like some parts but not others. His organization wouldn’t support adding lots of hydropower capacity unless it’s paired with investments in healthier and more free-flowing rivers.
Even as bolstering hydropower at some dams could reduce the need to burn fossil fuels, removing other dams could help people and nature cope with the higher temperatures, more intense droughts and more extreme storms that are already locked in. Kiernan pointed out that natural or restored ecosystems — including wetlands, floodplains and mangroves — are “extraordinarily important at modulating water variability,” aka absorbing floodwaters, boosting groundwater supplies and providing habitat.
These kinds of policies would be a big deal in California, home to more than 1,400 dams, dozens of giant reservoirs and thousands of miles of canals that mostly carry water from the state’s wet northern reaches to thirsty farms and cities.
That highly engineered water system has resulted in stories so sad they border on farce, like millions of young salmon being trucked from fish hatcheries to the Pacific Ocean this year because there won’t be enough water in rivers to get them downstream.
At the same time, the Golden State relies heavily on hydropower, especially during rainy years. In 2019, for instance, large dams produced 16.5% of in-state electricity generation. That power will almost certainly play a role in California reaching 100% climatefriendly energy by 2045, as mandated by state law.
Curtis Knight, executive director of the fish-focused conservation group CalTrout, wasn’t involved with the joint proposal. But when asked about it, he was enthusiastic. “The hydropower structures that we have, some make more sense than others. Some do bigger damage than others. Some generate more [energy] than others,” he said. “I think it’s really smart to think about ways to make those kinds of tradeoffs.”
Knight pointed to Shasta Dam, which impounds the Sacramento River and creates the state’s largest reservoir, as a dam that’s “not going to go away in my lifetime.” It serves too many purposes, he said — flood control, water storage, lots of hydropower. But the state also has many dams that CalTrout sees as ripe for removal, from the Klamath River in the north to Malibu Creek in the south.
“In some places we’re going to have to invest in infrastructure. But let’s also invest in undoing some things that never should have been done in the first place,” Knight said.
Plenty of dams have already been torn down across the country, including in California. And of the nation’s 90,000 dams, many have long outlined their usefulness. Only about 2,500 generate electricity.
Hundreds of those hydropower dams are also up for relicensing by 2030. If those facilities can’t afford upgrades to help fish survive — or if they’re having trouble making money — many may shut down. That’s an outcome the industry-environmental coalition wants to avoid, since hydropower accounted for 7% of U.S. electricity last year.
One way or another, America is going to need to spend some money on its aging dams. And one way or another, policymakers and the public will need to decide what role hydropower should play in our collective response to climate change. It’s not going to be an easy conversation. But the important stuff never is.