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How to Solve Climate Change

Day 30: Hydropower

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Today you will learn from expert guest Malcolm Woolf about hydropower, why it may or may not help solve climate change, how it works and what needs to still be done for it to be an effective solution to climate change.

Summary

Guest: Malcolm Woolf

Malcolm Woolf is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Hydropower Association.

Woolf comes to NHA after decades of experience in the energy and environment field. He was a Senior Vice President with Advanced Energy Economy and has extensive markets experience. He served in a cabinet level position for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley where he worked to promote affordable, reliable, clean energy, and he also led energy policy for the National Governors Association.

Woolf has experience in both the executive branch and Capitol Hill having served at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and as a Congressional committee staff member.

Woolf earned his law degree, as well as a Masters of Public Administration and Public Policy, from the University of Virginia. He holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Tufts University, with a year at Pembroke College, Oxford University.

Malcolm is the supporting NHA staff member for the CEO Council.

Follow Malcolm Woolf:

Explain succinctly what hydropower is from first principles.

The Department of Energy has called hydropower  the nation's 1st renewable energy resource. It's was established in the late 1800s, essentially generating electricity by having water push a turbine as the water goes through the hydropower facility, and spinning the turbine is what creates the electricity.

Why does hydropower help to solve climate change?

Currently there is 100 gigawatts of carbon free, flexible power generation capacity in the US.

  • 80 gigawatts of reservoir hydropower, but some of it is also run of the river hydropower.  
  • There's also another 23 gigawatts of so called pump storage.

That  is about 40 percent of the nation's renewable power. or 30 million American homes and families, homes and businesses every day. Furthermore it is a reliable source of energy when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not out.

Steel man the other side. Why would hydropower NOT work to solve climate change?

Let's address a common concern: methane production from hydropower.

  • Methane is produced by reservoirs. It's also produced by every other water body in the world, so whether that's a lake or stream or wetland, decaying matter can produce methane. There's nothing about running water through a turbine that releases any methane. It's simply the fact that there are reservoirs.
  • So, when talking about potential methane emissions from reservoirs. It's a real issue.  It's not a hydropower issue. It's an issue with water bodies.

Who benefits most by implementing hydropower as a solution?

Consumers absolutely benefit from the low energy prices.

The other groups that benefit are the environmental and climate communities to the extent that we are able to partner and focus on climate free generation where it makes sense and focus on dam removal where it doesn't.

  • America has 90, 000 dams in this country and only 3 percent of them are used to produce power.  So there's an opportunity to remove thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dams, restore healthy rivers, restore wild flow without impacting hydropower generation.

Who is harmed most by implementing hydropower  as a solution?

There was absolutely, hydropower facilities built in areas 100 years ago, maybe even 75 years ago, where they probably shouldn't have been built. And so that is a big area where hydropower can do harm, which is in part probably why we're not building new reservoirs today.

How does hydropower work as a solution to climate change?

Pump storage: pump water from two reservoirs when needed in a closed loop off river. Let us use our solar when we've got the production and it's sunset. When solar is no longer producing, but people are still using their electronics release the power. So that's part of the flexibility of of pump storage and hydropower is we can adjust as the grid evolves  and if we do it off river closed loop, there really isn't much of  a downside.

For hydropower as a solution to work, what innovation or policy needs to be created?

Taking a 3 R approach:

  • Retrofit existing infrastructure for carbon free generation where possible.
  • Rehabilitate them because dam safety is a problem. Sometimes these dams get abandoned and then that can create a threat to to downstream communities.
  • Removal of non power dams where the owner finds that they're no longer serving a useful purpose and let's get rid of them. So I think there's lots of opportunities to to collaborate.

One challenge is the flexibility of hydropower is able to keep lights on, but that flexibility, you get paid for producing a kilowatt of power, but you don't get paid for producing it when the grid needed it. You don't get that surcharge for that flexibility.

Another challenge is there is a wave of hydropower facilities that are up for relicensing. Often, since these are on water bodies, there's multiple states involved because they share the river. So there can be dozens of different agencies that have to give permits and the average license takes 8 years for relicensing an existing facility. It often takes over a decade, and some have taken over 15 years or longer.  So we've got to improve the licensing process and working together with tribal groups and with river groups.

Additional Resources

Top Skills To Learn

Our guest recommends learning the following skills:

  • Engineering
  • Technical trades like scuba diving to do facility maintence
  • Energy business:  energy trading and the finance side

Activity

Activity: Hydropower Project Evaluation

Description: Choose a major hydropower project from your region or globally. Research its planning, environmental impact assessments, and controversies. Create a presentation summarizing its benefits and challenges.

Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.

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