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194 comments on A North American Energy Plan for 2030: Hydro-electricity the forgotten renewable energy resource
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194 comments on A North American Energy Plan for 2030: Hydro-electricity the forgotten renewable energy resource
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GAIA Host Collective
This all looks great with historical climate patterns but what about potential climates 50 years from now? Rainfall is something that the models don't seem to be able to consistently agree on. The EROI and financial calculations must try and take all that risk into account.
The prognosis for Sweden is that a higher mean temperature on average should give larger rainfall with more variations. This is primarily handled as a security problem and is one argument for increasing the spillover capacity in dams. Such investments started about a decade ago as a reaction to the observation that natural flash floods already could put some dams at risk.
There are fairly large reinvestments in hydro power in Sweden and a few new projects but the average production is more or less not increasing due to legal issues. A few years ago our greens managed to start establishing precedence that 5% of the capacity could be spilled for other uses withouth compensation to the powerplant owners and that has started to eat into the production.
I expect that increased rainfall will give a fairly smooth change in the investment levels for handling security and turning water flow into cash flow.
Study: 50-50 chance of dry Lake Mead in 2021 - Climate Change ...
Feb 12, 2008 ... What are the chances that Lake Mead, a source of water for 22 million Americans, ... but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest. ... which feeds Lake Mead and Lake Powell, is seeing a net deficit of nearly ....
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23130256/
And don't forget population shifts.
And from DrumBeat:
The dam infrastructure problem
A new report says over 1,800 dams pose significant risk to human life. Fixing them will cost billions, but can we afford this in addition to roads, bridges and other projects?
It is self financing if they produce electricity and secure a larger supply of fresh water. It could provide lots of opportunities for low return on investment, low risk and inflation secured long term pension fund investments. Its good stuff if you got money now and want to as assured as possible that they still are available and has grown some in 20-30 years and it also makes sense on a macro level since it actually increases the societies net worth.