NewsRack: flenvcenter/Energy_National/Renewable-Energy/Hydroelectric

Reuters: Proposed Malaysia Dams Raise Transparency, Livelihood Fears - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Kirk Herbertson — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Thin Lei Win (Reuters) Date: Monday, May 20, 2013 BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Activists in Sarawak, one of Malaysia's poorest states, have denounced local government plans to build 12 hydro-power dams, which they say is an environmental disaster in the making that will enrich an elite few and displace tens of thousands of people. Campaigners also accused International Hydropower Association (IHA), an industry lobby group, of legitimising those plans by opening its biennial conference on Tuesday in Sarawak. Critics, including opposition politicians, say the dams due to be built by 2020 will produce more energy than needed. However, state-owned Sarawak Energy (SEB), which is awarding many of the project's contracts, says it plans to sell energy to other parts of Malaysia, Brunei, as well as the Indonesian parts of Borneo. Costing $105 billion, the dams are Southeast Asia's most capital-intensive project. Activists say they are unnecessary and threaten ...

AFP: Malaysia Hydropower Meeting to Open Amid Controversy - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Kirk Herbertson — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Agence France Presse (AFP) Date: Sunday, May 19, 2013 SARAWAK, MALAYSIA - The world hydroelectric industry's decision to meet in a Malaysian state where dams have uprooted rainforests and native peoples is drawing bitter fire from environmental and tribal groups. The International Hydropower Association's (IHA) four-day biennial meeting to push "sustainable hydropower" opens Tuesday in Kuching, the languid capital of Sarawak state on Borneo island, and a highly contentious choice. Sarawak's powerful boss is widely accused of felling huge swathes of rainforest in a much-criticised dam-building drive. Opponents of Taib Mahmud -- Sarawak's chief minister for 42 years -- plan to hold their own "parallel congress" in Kuching and other protests, bringing to the capital a resistance campaign previously confined to the interior. "The Taib government is using the IHA name to 'greenwash' all the damage it has done," said Peter Kallang, head of Save Sarawak Rivers, a ...

Grand Inga - the World Bank’s Latest Silver Bullet for Africa - International Rivers Sitewide RSS Feed

Peter Bosshard — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Peter Bosshard Mega-dams have a long history of bypassing the poor in the DRC IRIN When World Bank President Jim Kim visits the Democratic Republic of Congo this week , he will find a country rich in natural resources but blighted by a lack of basic services. The world’s poorest country has not only been ravaged by civil wars, but by decades of grandiose development schemes that inevitably failed. The World Bank and other donors are now concocting the continent’s biggest pie in the sky: the $80 billion Grand Inga Dam on the Congo River. Close to 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa live in a state of permanent power outage. It is tempting to provide electricity to so many people with one ambitious silver bullet. The Grand Inga Dam would divert the Congo River near its mouth and, according to its promoters, meet the electricity needs of more than 500 million people. With a capacity of 40,000 megawatts, the scheme would be the world’s largest hydropower project. On ...

Agency jumble blocks Mancos hydro plans - Durango Herald

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

DENVER x2013 Rep. Scott Tipton had one of his greatest successes in his two years in Congress last month when the House overwhelmingly passed his bill to promote small hydroelectric projects on canals and pipelines.But it turns out the bill will not help one of the dams in the Cortez Republicanx2019s own district.Gary...

Cutting rain forests may undercut hydro output - Seattle Times: Nation & World

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The elimination of swaths of rain forest decreases rainfall, and is likely to reduce the energy output of hydroelectric projects in countries such as Brazil, according to a study published by the National Academy of Sciences.

PR: With Inga Dams, Donors Set to Repeat Past Failures - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Berklee Lowrey-Evans — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Date: Saturday, May 18, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Berkeley/Pretoria: The Congolese government will today announce plans to move forward with the Grand Inga Dam at a conference in Paris. World Bank President Jim Kim is expected to support the return to mega-dams on his visit to the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda on May 21-24. The proposed dam on the Congo River, which would be the largest hydropower project ever undertaken, will figure prominently on the agenda of his trip. NGOs warn that with such projects, donors are about to repeat the grandiose failure of past mega-dams. International financiers have invested billions of dollars in the Inga 1 and 2 dams and transmission lines on the Congo River over the past 40 years. The projects produce power primarily for the mining industry, while only 6-9% of the country’s population has access to electricity. The new dams proposed for the Congo River are again designed to serve the mining industry and export markets in South Africa, and would ...

Malaysia: Authoritarian Leader Lures Investors With Promise of “Responsible” Dams - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Kirk Herbertson — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Kirk Herbertson Photo by: SAVE Rivers Network The Malaysian state of Sarawak is the new star of the global hydropower industry. Located on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia, Sarawak is largely unknown around the world. Five years ago, Sarawak’s ruler Mr. Abdul Taib Mahmud announced that he will “transform Sarawak into a developed state” by building 12 large dams in the state’s remote, tropical forests. He argues that the dams will produce an abundance of cheap electricity, which will attract heavy industry and create jobs. Reuters has called Taib’s scheme “staggeringly ambitious,” especially since the dams will produce 450% more electricity than Sarawak currently needs. Mr. Taib’s scheme has caught the attention of the world’s leading hydropower companies. Next week, on May 20-25, Sarawak will host the industry’s world congress, which is organized every few years by the International Hydropower Association (IHA). The IHA’s mission is to demonstrate that large ...

Study Finds Loss of Rain Forests Can Deplete Hydropower - NY Times: Science

By FELICITY BARRINGER — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Study Finds Loss of Rain Forests Can Deplete Hydropower

Iran says nuclear sites safe from earthquakes and cyber threat - World

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - Iran's nuclear and hydropower facilities are well protected from cyber attacks and even the most powerful earthquakes, Iranian environmental protection chief Mohammad-Javad Mohammadizadeh said on Friday. Iran's only nuclear power reactor at Bushehr was unscathed when a strong earthquake that killed 37 people and injured 850 hit close to the site last month, Iranian officials and the Russian company that built it said. ... ...

World Bank Turns to Hydropower to Square Development with Climate Change - International Rivers Sitewide RSS Feed

Zachary Hurwitz — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Howard Schneider, The Washington Post Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 World Bank President Jim Yong Kim attends the Fragility Forum this month in Washington. The forum discussed ways for fragile nations to improve their economies, their infrastructure and the well-being of their citizens. Michael Reynolds/European Photopress Agency The World Bank is making a major push to develop large-scale hydropower projects around the globe, something it had all but abandoned a decade ago but now sees as crucial to resolving the tension between economic development and the drive to tame carbon use. Major hydropower projects in the Congo, Zambia, Nepal and elsewhere — all of a scale dubbed “transformational” to the regions involved — are part of the bank’s fundraising drive among wealthy nations. Bank lending for hydropower has scaled up steadily in recent years, and officials expect the trend to continue amid a worldwide boom in water-fueled electricity. Such projects ...

NH governor raps Conn. hydropower energy measure - Boston Globe: New Hampshire

Wed, 08 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

NH governor raps Conn. hydropower energy measure

World Bank turns to hydropower to square development with climate change - Washington Post

Howard Schneider — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The World Bank is making a major push to develop large-scale hydropower projects around the globe, something it had all but abandoned a decade ago but now sees as crucial to resolving the tension between economic development and the drive to tame carbon use. ...

Plans to Harness Chinese River’s Power Threaten a Region - International Rivers Sitewide RSS Feed

Katy Yan — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Andrew Jacobs Date: Saturday, May 4, 2013 Ke Shouyi, 47, a farmer in the Lisu ethnic group, prodded his cow to plow the remote rural area near the Nu River in China’s Yunnan Province. Photo by Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times BINGZHONGLUO, China - From its crystalline beginnings as a rivulet seeping from a glacier on the Tibetan Himalayas to its broad, muddy amble through the jungles of Myanmar, the Nu River is one of Asia’s wildest waterways, its 1,700-mile course unimpeded as it rolls toward the Andaman Sea. But the Nu's days as one of the region's last free-flowing rivers are dwindling. The Chinese government stunned environmentalists this year by reviving plans to build a series of hydropower dams on the upper reaches of the Nu, the heart of a Unesco World Heritage site in China’s southwest Yunnan Province that ranks among the world's most ecologically diverse and fragile places. Critics say the project will force the relocation of tens of thousands of ...

Debt-free B.C.? - rabble.ca - News for the rest of us

PolicyNote — Sun, 05 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

It is pretty clear that Premier Christy Clark's election-inspired promise of a debt-free B.C. is not to be taken seriously. There is no credible market analysis indicating that the royalties from B.C. liquified natural gas (LNG) exports would be sufficient to do that in 15 years, as the Premier would have it. The potential for increased gas supply from other sources and diminishing price spreads between North America and the Asian market are simply too great to place any weight on a promise of the multi-billion dollar windfall that would be needed to pay off B.C.'s debt.

Dams in the Amazon: the Rights and Wrongs of Belo Monte - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Zachary Hurwitz — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: The Economist Date: Saturday, May 4, 2013 Having spent heavily to make the world’s third-biggest hydroelectric project greener, Brazil risks getting a poor return on its $14 billion investment THE biggest building site in Brazil is neither in the concrete jungle of São Paulo nor in beachside Rio de Janeiro, which is being revamped to host the 2016 Olympics. It lies 3,000km (1,900 miles) north in the state of Pará, deep in the Amazon basin. Some 20,000 labourers are working around the clock at Belo Monte on the Xingu river, the biggest hydropower plant under construction anywhere. When complete, its installed capacity, or theoretical maximum output, of 11,233MW will make it the world’s third-largest, behind China’s Three Gorges and Itaipu, on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. Everything about Belo Monte is outsized, from the budget (28.9 billion reais, or $14.4 billion), to the earthworks—a Panama Canal-worth of soil and rock is being excavated—to the ...

Hydropower Bills Enjoy Bipartisan Support in Congress - Yahoo: Politics

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

With a pair of bills on hydropower, lawmakers are reviving two pieces of conventional wisdom long forgotten in gridlocked Washington: Energy issues tend to be more geographical than ideological, and Republicans can (and do) support renewable energy.

New York approves 1,000-MW Quebec-New York City power line - Yahoo: US National

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By Scott DiSavino (Reuters) - The New York Public Service Commission on Thursday approved a plan to build the Champlain Hudson transmission line, which would be capable of moving 1,000 megawatts of hydropower from Quebec to New York City. Privately held Transmission Developers Inc, a unit of Blackstone Group LP, said on its website that it would take about 3-1/2 years to build the power line at an estimated cost of $2.2 billion. ...

A Dam Too Far in Laos - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Berklee Lowrey-Evans — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: By Melinda Boh Date: Friday, April 12, 2013 VIENTIANE - It was once referred to by US magazine Newsweek as a "kinder, gentler" type of dam. Since the Nam Theun 2 hydropower dam commenced commercial operations in 2010, the World Bank and other proponents of the multi-billion dollar power project have trumpeted it as an economic and social development success story for host country Laos. But with the negative publicity and diplomatic tussles now focused on the proposed US$3.5 billion Xayaboury dam , which if built promises to hurt downstream communities and the environment in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Nam Theun 2's emerging failures have largely escaped critical scrutiny. In particular, there are rising indications that Nam Theun 2 and its massive 450 square kilometer reservoir are responsible for massive amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions , amounting to as much as one million tons of methane and carbon dioxide per year, according to recent independent ...

China's Superbank - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Peter Bosshard — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Peter Bosshard China Development Bank has funded all major Chinese hydropower projects nipic.com Li Liguan lives at the outskirts of Loudi city in Hunan province. A former farmer, he was uprooted from his land to make way for a stadium. Now he tries to benefit from the construction boom by hauling bricks and renting out a room. His fate is typical for the hopes and injustices of China’s development model. The engine that transforms the lives of millions of Chinese citizens like Li Liguan is China Development Bank (CDB). The bank channels capital to key sectors and projects in the world's fastest growing economy - an essential role in any development state. “Understand CDB and you understand the core of China’s state capitalism,” Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe , two financial journalists, assert. With their new book, China’s Superbank , they shed light on the inner workings of China’s rise as a global power. CDB is not only the house bank of China’s powerful ...

Tiptons bill to boost hydro clears House - Durango Herald

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

WASHINGTON The House of Representatives passed U.S. Rep. Scott Tiptons Hydropower and Rural Jobs Act by a 416-7 vote on Wednesday, streamlining the regulatory process for small hydropower development projects on existing Bureau of Reclamation conduits.

J Henry Fair: The Gas Bubble - Green on HuffingtonPost.com

J Henry Fair — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

To understand the hydro-fracking bubble, there are some things one must know: each well only produces a little gas, reserves were significantly overstated at the beginning of the game, and most important: Wall Street is very invested and wants its money out.

Primed for Success: The Remarkable Potential for -and Barriers to- Chile's Renewable Energy Sector - Switchboard, from NRDC

Amanda Maxwell — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Amanda Maxwell, Latin America Advocate, Washington, DC: Chile’s Renewable Energy Center (CER) released its annual report about the country’s non-conventional renewable energy* sector this week, showing that 2012 was a record-breaking year for the industry. 165 megawatts of renewables connected to the grid last year, bringing the...

China-backed Dams Escalating Ethnic Tension in Burma - International Rivers News RSS Feed

Katy Yan — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:30:00 GMT

By: Grace Mang and Katy Yan Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 A Christian reverend concludes a ceremony on the banks of the Salween at the International Day of Action for Rivers and Against Dams in March. Photo by Karen Environmental and Social Action Network One month after the Chinese government lifted its ban on dams on the upper Salween River (known as the Nu in China), the Burmese government confirmed that it too will allow the construction of Chinese-backed hydropower projects along the lower Salween. In late February, the deputy minister for electric power told parliament that six dams would be built on the Salween to generate electricity, referring to the Kunlong, Tasang, Hat Gyi, Nong Pa (Naungpha), Mantawng and Ywathit dams. While the Burmese government has yet to reveal the companies involved in the projects, it is no secret that among them are dam-building giants Sinohydro , China Three Gorges Project Corporation and China Southern Power Grid . In 2010, ...

Environmentalists struggle to stop Chinese dam project - MinnPost

By Benjamin Carlson — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:30:00 GMT

HONG KONG , China — Nearly a decade after Chinese environmentalists achieved one of their greatest successes by stalling plans to build 13 dams on the Nujiang, one of China’s two remaining free-flowing rivers, the “angry river” is under threat again. Earlier this year, the government announced it would help power the country’s densely populated, industry-heavy eastern seaboard by re-instating a project to build five new mega-dams along the Nujiang and several other waterways in China’s biologically rich southwest. Flowing nearly 1,800 miles from the Tibetan plateau through southwestern Yunnan Province into Thailand and Myanmar — where it’s known as the Salween — the Nujiang supports an estimated 25 percent of China’s plant and animal species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. Near the Burmese border, the Nujiang slices a 13,000 foot-deep gorge through some of the world’s most dramatic mountain landscapes. American University professor Judith Shapiro, author of China's ...

New England renewable energy a hard sell in region - Twincities.com: Nation

By STEPHEN SINGER Associated Press — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:30:00 GMT

HARTFORD, Conn.—Establishing a New England market to buy renewable energy seemed a laudable goal when governors committed last year to bulk