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Finding balance between energy and conservation in hydropower development Rivers The Power ofTHE POWER OF RIVERS 2 Acknowledgments Photo: Jeff OppermanTHE POWER OF RIVERS 3 Lead authors: Dr. Jeff Opperman, Dr. Gnther Grill, Dr. Joerg Hartmann. Case study authors and research: Hector Angarita, Pedro Bara Neto, Juliana Delgado, David Harrison, Dr. Jonathan V. Higgins, Erik Martin, Amy Newsock, Dr. Paulo Petry, Ben Roth, Leonardo Sotomayor, Juan Francisco Torres Origel, Diana Vzquez. Contributors: Carolina Aguirre-Echeverri, David Banks, Ana Cristina Barros, Charles Bedford, Dr. Giulio Boccaletti, Katie Crossman, Randy Curtis, Jorge Gastelumendi, Dietmar Grimm, Qiaoyu Guo, Dr. Bernhard Lehner, Emily Powell, Dr. Carmen Revenga, Lynn Scarlett, Lisa Shipley, Meghan Snow, Dr. Rebecca Tharme, Jerry Touval and Dr. Christiane Zarfl. Institutions contributing data and/or analyses: Empresa de Planejamento Energtico (EPE) Environmental Department, McGill University, Mexicos Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), Mexican National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), The Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries Berlin (IGB), the Center for Applied Geosciences of the Universitt Tbingen, the Institute of Environmental Systems Research (USF) of the University of Osnabrck, International Hydropower Association, WWF, and the University of Wisconsin. The following people served as interviewees or reviewed earlier drafts of this paper. Their contributions strengthened the paper, however, the positions expressed in this paper are those of The Nature Conservancy and do not necessarily reflect those who provided input. Ken Adams, Dr. Luiz Gabriel Azevedo, Emmanuel Boulet, Emmanuel Branche, Jean Michel Devernay, Mark Eckstein, Roger Gill, Rikard Liden, yvind Espeseth Lier, Dr. Cathy Reidy Liermann, Kimberly Lyon, Gil Maranho Neto, Dr. Peter McIntyre, Pelayo Menendez, Mario Barroso Ramos Neto, Dr. Judith Plummer Braeckman, John Reid, William Rex, Hugh Rudnick, Jamie Skinner, Richard Taylor, Paula Hanna Valdujo, Hermani Vieira. Report Designer: Paul Gormont, Apertures Inc. This report would not have been possible without the generous support of: Caterpillar Foundation, Goldman Sachs Center for Environmental Markets and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. Much of the thinking on basin-scale planning described in this paper was initiated during a collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank (with funding from IDB), summarized in the report The Next Frontier of Hydropower Sustainability: Planning at the System Scale (Hartmann et al., 2013). Please cite this document as: Opperman, J., G. Grill and J. Hartmann, The Power of Rivers: Finding balance between energy and conservation in hydropower development. 2015. The Nature Conservancy: Washington, D.C. 2015 The Nature Conservancy. Printed on recycled paper.THE POWER OF RIVERS 4 Acknowledgments . 2 Foreword . 6 Key Findings . 9 THE POWER OF RIVERS Finding balance between energy and conservation in hydropower development .11 Prologue .12 The value of free-flowing rivers .12 The expansion of hydropower .13 Whats at stake if hydropower is not developed and managed sustainably? .14 A different path .19 Funding better outcomes .23 The way forward .25 RIVER BASIN CASE STUDIES .27 Coatzacoalcos River Basin, Mexico .28 Magdalena River Basin, Colombia .30 Tapajs River Basin, Brazil .32 CHAPTER 3 TABLE OF CONTENTSTHE POWER OF RIVERS 5 APPENDIX A Methods for spatial analysis within case study basins and global modeling .34 Downstream flow alteration .35 Fragmentation of river channel networks .36 Basin-scale studies .37 Global calculations of future impacts from planned dams .38 Global-scale extrapolations .38 APPENDIX B Methods for quantitative estimates of costs and benefits of Hydropower by Design .41 Additional costs of best practices .42 Additional benefits of best practices .43 Relative cost analysis .44 APPENDIX C References .46 Photo: Bridget BesawTHE POWER OF RIVERS 6 Foreword Photo: Bridget BesawTHE POWER OF RIVERS 7 Rivers are powerful in many ways. They feed communities, support economies and are one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet. They can also provide electricity to millions of people. Hydropower development is contributing to one of the largest expansions of dams seen in history. According to some forecasts, as many hydropower dams will be built in the next three decades as were built in the last century, essentially doubling global hydropower capacity. Emerging economies, in particular, are under extraordinary pressure to harness the power offered by their natural resources. Finding balance between river conservation and energy production is no easy task. Many people question whether it is even possible. Some environmentalists doubt the feasibility of protecting critical ecosystems in the face of any basin-wide development. Some government leaders fear environmental concerns will jeopardize the development of desperately needed energy sources and storage capacity. The Nature Conservancy believes that good science and a thorough understanding of the ways in which infrastructure and rivers interact can lead to solutions that balance energy development with the many other values that rivers provide. For more than 60 years, we have identified balanced solutions and worked alongside governments, hydropower developers and dam operators. We have more than 400 staff working on the ground, every day, to provide the environmental flow science required to re-operate existing dams and restore critical habitat, monitor the integrity of ecosystems, integrate the protection of nature in the planning of new developments, and where necessary, oppose avoidable impacts. In the spirit of finding balanced solutions to both the protection of the environment and economic development, we helped craft the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol, which offers an important framework to manage sustainability in the hydropower sector. “The Power of Rivers” builds on that experience and articulates the potential to find more-balanced outcomes. While conservation and hydropower development will not always be able to find common ground, our research shows that in many cases, it is possible to achieve significant levels of hydropower development while still protecting important ecological values. While more-balanced outcomes may come with additional costs, they are often relatively low, and the benefits of doing so many of which are directly monetizable may compensate for the costs. Ultimately, we believe the long-term protection of rivers represents a good deal for nations and their economies. By working with governments, communities, the hydropower industry and other partners, we can keep intact thousands of kilometers of free-flowing rivers while providing clean energy to people around the world. This is not an either/or decision it is a necessary step in building a sustainable world.Giulio Boccaletti, PhD Global Managing Director, Water The Nature Conservancy THE POWER OF RIVERS 8 LENGTH OF RIVER CHANNEL WITH POTENTIAL FOR IMPROVED OUTCOMES FROM HYDROPOWER BY DESIGN AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL BEST PRACTICES 100,000 k m Photo: Sergio PucciTHE POWER OF RIVERS 9 KEY FINDINGS The Nature Conservancys white paper, “The Power of Rivers: Finding balance between energy and conservation in hydropower development,” addresses the global expansion of hydropower dams and the need to find development scenarios that provide energy, but also work for communities and nature. Designed as a resource for hydropower companies, governments, financiers and other organizations, we used a global database of dams currently planned or under construction to demonstrate how system-scale approaches can produce more-balanced outcomes for rivers and energy. Our findings show that system-scale solutions have the global potential to maintain connectivity on more than 100,000 km of river while reaching equivalent energy development levels. Global hydropower capacity is projected to approximately double from the 2010 installed capacity of 1,000 gigawatts (GW). This expansion would require a dramatic increase in the number of hydropower dams in river basins around the world, including many basins that still have natural, free-flowing rivers. Although hydropower can play an important role in a low-carbon energy future, a doubling of hydropower capacity risks many other values that rivers provide, including fisheries and flood-recession agriculture that feed hundreds of millions of people. “The Power of Rivers” explores the potential for achieving more balanced outcomes from hydropower development. The risks we face if hydropower is not developed and managed sustainably We used a global database of future hydropower damsboth under construction and plannedto estimate potential future impacts from hydropower expansion. We modeled impacts to river flow patterns and the loss of connectivity in channel networks due to fragmentation from dams. Our results indicate that: Completion of those hydropower dams currently under construction and those that are planned will affect 300,000 km of rivers through fragmentation or changes to river flow patterns. These impacts are projected to occur in many of the river basins with the greatest freshwater fish harvests. Further, nearly 70 percent of all affected kilometers will occur in freshwater ecoregions with the greatest diversity of fish species. Within these high diversity basins, this represents a 22 percent decline in kilometers of river not affected by dams. A different path: Hydropower by Design Better outcomes for hydropower development are possibleoutcomes that are more balanced across social, environmental and economic values. More-balanced outcomes can occur at the scale of individual dams (design and operation), as well as in the planning and siting of new dams. We call the integration of these scales to pursue balanced outcomes “Hydropower by Design,” which strives to: Avoid the most damaging sites and direct development toward sites that will have lower impacts; Minimize impacts and restore key processes through better design and operation of individual dams; and Offset those impacts that cannot be avoided, minimized, or restored by investing in compensation such as protection and management of nearby rivers that provide similar values. We acknowledge that hydropower development is guided by rigorous design at various levels; Hydropower by Design is our contribution to these design and planning processes, focused on more effective integration of conservation into hydropower. In this paper, we focused on the potential for Hydropower by Design to identify spatial arrangements of dams that can maximize the length of connected river channels for a given level of development. (Here we use connected channels as a proxy for rivers that can still support natural functions.) THE POWER OF RIVERS 10 In an in-depth investigation of three river basins to ground-truth our methods, we found that Hydropower by Design scenarios generally could maintain twice the length of connected river compared to scenarios with similar levels of energy development but not optimized for energy and connectivity. We then modeled application of Hydropower by Design in the full set of basins in the global database where development could impact basin-scale connectivity. At this global scale, application of Hydropower by Design could reduce the amount of river length lost to fragmentation by approximately 100,000 km compared to business-as-usual approaches for the same amount of energy development. Funding better outcomes We estimate that implementing Hydropower by Design will increase overall investment costs by approximately 15 percent compared to business-as-usual approaches to development. Seventy percent of all planned hydropower investment is projected to occur in river basins where development would threaten basin-scale connectivity. Implementing Hydropower by Design in these basins would represent an additional global cost of approximately US$3 billion per year over business-as-usual approaches between now and 2040. Hydropower by Designand system-scale approa
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