{"id":7838,"date":"2017-12-02T10:24:44","date_gmt":"2017-12-02T09:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7838"},"modified":"2017-12-02T10:24:44","modified_gmt":"2017-12-02T09:24:44","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-problems-hydropower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7838","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – problems with hydropower"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2500\"<\/a>Who would have thought that there could be any environmental problems with hydropower?\u00a0 This form of energy is clean, does base load and can be relatively unobtrusive.\u00a0 Dams behind reservoirs can be beautiful as I have seen myself many times.<\/p>\n

There are some problems though.\u00a0 In the tropics as this blog has outlined before the dams can be net greenhouse gas emitters.\u00a0 Amongst the other problems with hydropower are flooding of beautiful wilderness and displacement of indigenous tribal groups.\u00a0 The way around this I thought was to build not vast dams producing multiple gigawatts of peak output but many small “run of river schemes”.\u00a0 In these there is no dam and water travels down a pipe and is then returned to the river.\u00a0 These are generally regarded as friendly and benign to wild life.\u00a0 It seems I and other like me might have to think again.<\/p>\n

In the Balkans nearly 3000 hydrpower plants are planned with 187 under construction.\u00a0 Most of these are very small with no dams.\u00a0 This should tick OK boxes but obviously there are concerns<\/a>.\u00a0 Many of the plants are in national parks or protected areas.\u00a0 The problems with hydropower here have arisen since the run of river plants are taking too much water out of the rivers leaving the stretches between the extraction and return pipes dry.\u00a0 In addition very multiple small plants are being put in on the same bit of river which individually do not require permission but cumulatively have a big effect.\u00a0 There have between conflicts and even murders committed in the conflicts between the small farmers and large energy companies in Albania.\u00a0 In the UK permission has to granted, the rules are strict and it takes a long time to get the go ahead.\u00a0 It looks like this may be a good thing.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who would have thought that there could be any environmental problems with hydropower?\u00a0 This form of energy is clean, does base load and can be relatively unobtrusive.\u00a0 Dams behind reservoirs can be beautiful as I have seen myself many times. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-renewables"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - problems with hydropower - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7838\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7838\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7838\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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