One of the key ways to combat global climate change is to boost the world’s use of renewable energy. But even green energy has its environmental costs. A new approach describes just how hydropower measures up when it comes to land use effects.
One of the key ways to combat global climate change is to boost the world’s use of renewable energy. But even green energy has its environmental costs. A new approach describes just how hydropower measures up when it comes to land use effects.
Hydropower is the world’s top provider of renewable energy, producing a whopping 16 per cent of the global energy supply. That’s a good thing when it comes to the climate, especially compared to energy from fossil fuels. But hydropower is not without its environmental costs, particularly when it comes to the land that is drowned under reservoirs or gobbled up by roads and power lines built for a hydropower project.
Now, a team of Norwegian-based researchers has developed an innovative way to describe how much land it takes to generate a kilowatt-hour of electricity from hydropower. The goal is to make it easier for policymakers and businesses to assess the environmental trade-offs of current hydropower plants and involved in investing in new hydropower plants.
“Some hydropower reservoirs may look natural at first. However, they are human influenced and if land has been flooded for their creation, this may impact terrestrial ecosystems,” said Martin Dorber, a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Industrial Ecology Programme.
Read more at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Image: Norway is one of the top-ten hydropower electricity producers worldwide, with more than 95 percent of domestic power production from hydropower. A new tool developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) enables policymakers and industry to understand the tradeoffs between hydropower and loss of land and biodiversity from when lands are drowned under reservoirs. (Credit: Ånund Killingtveit/NTNU)
