Development Of Hydropower Projects Research Articles

Human rights law in the development of hydropower projects in transboundary context

Human rights obligations are owed by states to the individuals in their territory and under their jurisdiction and may also arise in extraterritorial contexts. This document provides an overview of how various human rights and in particular the human right to safe drinking water and indigenous peoples' rights are related to hydropower development. This analysis, will present available international law tools and mechanisms including river basin organizations and judicial bodies which may conciliate tensions between and within states when the development of hydropower project risk to affect the quantity or the quality of water provided to local and vulnerable communities.

Multitemporal landslide inventory and susceptibility map for the Arun River Basin, Nepal

AbstractThe transboundary Arun River Basin (ARB) spreads across Nepal and Tibet. Nearly 95% of the basin lies in Tibet through which the Pumqu River flows, forming the Arun River once it enters Nepal. The ARB has five large hydropower projects undergoing construction or planned for the future. Rainfall and earthquake‐induced landslides, landslide‐dammed lakes and landslide‐induced glacial lake outburst floods pose major risks to smooth operation of these projects. To safeguard upcoming hydropower projects, areas susceptible to landslides in the ARB must be identified. We used high‐resolution satellite imagery and open‐source tools to generate a multitemporal landslide inventory for the basin. The rigorously quality‐controlled inventory represents a yearly record of landslides from 2011 to 2020. A data‐driven approach was used to map areas susceptible to landslides within the ARB. The multitemporal landslide inventory combined with other readily available Earth observation‐based variables was used to create a landslide susceptibility map. The susceptibility analysis provides a valuable initial estimate of where landslides are likely to initiate. These landslide products could form the basis of more comprehensive local studies to inform hydropower project development.

Land cover changes and hydropower in Bhutan: Analyzing trade-offs in economic and ecosystem impacts

Hydropower is recognized as a vital renewable, stable and clean energy source that plays a crucial role in sustainable development. However, it often entails significant environmental impacts on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in mountainous regions where its potential is greatest. This study assesses the land cover changes driven by the development of hydropower projects in Bhutan, specifically the projects Punatsangchu I, II, and Mangdechu, with a combined capacity of 2940 MWp. We employed high-resolution satellite imagery alongside historical land use data to quantify these changes. Our analysis reveals that over the course of around 17 years, 1400 ha of forest and 270 ha of agricultural land were cleared, leading to an average annual economic cost of USD 7.6 million. The relative forest cover loss, measured at 0.5 ha MWp−1, was significantly lower than earlier estimates of 2 ha MWp−1. The construction of transmission lines, often a neglected aspect, accounted for the majority (>80 %) of the forest area cleared. Conducting an economic analysis, the annual net benefits of hydropower generation and transmission from these plants are estimated at USD 217 million, about 9 % of Bhutan's 2020 GDP. However, these benefits significantly diminish to USD 8.6 million annually when only considering the transmission infrastructure. The study reveals that the trade-offs between the economic benefits of hydropower and the loss of ecosystem services are relatively modest but become more pronounced when excluding generation benefits and applying higher values to ecosystem services. Although the study assumes a complete loss of ecosystem services, the creation of transmission line corridors contributes to a higher landscape heterogeneity potentially benefitting biodiversity. The findings have significant implications for Bhutan's policy-making in spatial planning, energy, forestry, and agriculture, and highlight areas for further research on hydropower's environmental and economic impacts.

Indigenous legal expertise, sacred rivers, and hydropower development projects in Third Pole country Nepal

While Indigenous expertise, values and knowledge systems have become a buzzword in academic and policy debates about climate change, sustainable development, and the protection of ecosystems, this research note turns the lens to Indigenous legal expertise used by Indigenous lawyers in Nepal in the defence of Indigenous peoples’ rights regarding the construction of dams and transmission line projects. Drawing on preliminary insights of legal anthropological research in Nepal, the research note intends to add an additional analytical lens to the emerging concept of cultural expertise of Indigenous knowledge embedded in Indigenous human-water-life ontologies.

Mechanisms of Learning and Innovation in Project Performance: Evidence from Chinese Hydropower Industry

Hydropower, a renewable energy resource, underpins China’s economic and social advancement, gaining prominence amidst the country’s energy structure metamorphosis. Enhancing the performance of hydropower development projects is imperative, with the mechanisms of learning and innovation wielding a substantial impact. The extant literature on how learning and innovation affect hydropower project performance remains nebulous, lacking a systematic model to elucidate these impact mechanisms. This investigation melds theoretical analysis with the idiosyncrasies of hydropower project development, forging a theoretical model to decipher the interplay of learning, innovation, and project performance. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we probe the influence of organizational learning orientation and individual learning on participant capabilities, engineering innovation magnitude, and overall project performance. Path analysis divulges that organizational learning orientation catalyzes individual learning, jointly enhancing engineering innovation and project performance directly, although the effect on each participant’s capability necessitates mediation through the engineering innovation level. This pioneering study establishes the links and influence trajectories between learning, innovation, and project performance, systematically delineating them. It fills a scholarly void in exploring learning and innovation mechanisms within hydropower project development, propounding strategies to augment project efficiency and furnishing pragmatic, constructive insights for better engineering practice outputs.

Public attitudes toward hydropower in China: The role of information provision and partisan identification

The development of hydropower projects needs public support. Although China has led the world in hydropower development during the past few decades, little is known about how the Chinese public views existing hydropower projects and future hydropower development plans. Based on an online survey experiment (N = 2971), this study investigates the effects of five types of information provision, including (1) power generation benefit, (2) emission reduction benefit, (3) flood control, navigation and grid benefits, (4) negative environmental impact and (5) involuntary migration impact of hydropower, and partisan identification on public attitudes to China's hydropower policy and most representative hydropower project, the Three Gorges Project. First, information provision about the benefits of power generation has no significant effect on public attitudes to the Three Gorges Project and China's hydropower development plans. Second, information provision about the benefits of emission reduction and flood control, navigation and grid effects can significantly increase public evaluation of the Three Gorges Project, but does not influence public support for abstract hydropower development plans. Third, information provision about the negative impacts on the environment and involuntary migration can significantly decrease public evaluation of the Three Gorges Project and support for hydropower development plans. Finally, Chinese Communist Party members have more positive attitudes to China's hydropower development plans and the Three Gorge Project than the non-members, and they are more responsive to environmental information but less responsive to the migration issue.

Ascertainment of Hydropower Potential Sites Using Location Search Algorithm in Hunza River Basin, Pakistan

The recent energy shortfall in Pakistan has prompted the need for the development of hydropower projects to cope with the energy and monetary crisis. Hydropower in the northern areas is available yet has not been explored too much. Focusing on the sustainable development goal (SDG) “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy”, thirteen proposed sites were selected from upstream to downstream of the Hunza River for analysis. The head on all the proposed sites was determined by taking the elevation difference between the proposed turbine and the intake at all sites. The discharge on all proposed ungauged sites was determined using ArcGIS for watershed delineation and the area ratio method along with Soil Conservation Service–Curve Number (SCS-CN) by using gauged data of Hunza River provided by Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Pakistan at Daniyor bridge Gilgit, Shimshal and the Passo tributaries of Hunza River. The Location Search Algorithm (LSA) approach used a multi-criteria decision-making tool (MDM) to make a decision matrix considering the location and constraint criteria and then normalizing the decision matrix using benefit and cost criteria, the relative weights were assigned to all criteria using a rank sum weighted method and the sites were ranked on the basis of the final score. The results revealed that Hunza River has a significant hydropower potential and based on the final score in the LSA approach, proposed site 13, site 4 and site 9 were concluded as the most promising sites among proposed alternatives. The proposed methodology could be an encouraging step for decision makers for future hydropower development in Pakistan.

Livelihood Resilience of Households Affected by The Upper Cisokan Pumped Storage Hydropower Development Project

This article examines the impact of the large-scale Upper Cisokan Pumped Storage Hydropower (UCPSH) development project, in West Java, Indonesia on household livelihoods. The process of land acquisition and resettlement has taken away land-based resources that are the source of livelihood for households in 4 villages around the project. This article discusses how the resilience of household livelihoods occurs 5 years after land acquisition and resettlement. This study was conducted by interviewing 134 households affected by land acquisition and resettlement living in the vicinity of the UCPSH project site. The level of severity is studied to see how the household can respond to disturbances. Livelihood resilience in affected households occurs when the household’s livelihood system can absorb disturbances, then responds by re-establishing livelihood capital and assets. Livelihood strategies are carried out based on the capacity possessed to maintain and improve the quality of life. As a result, there are two livelihood strategies carried out by the affected households, the agricultural intensification strategy has improved 9% of living conditions and the livelihood diversification strategy has improved 2.5% of living conditions.

Susceptibility Evaluation of Debris Flow Disaster in Plateau Hydropower Cascade Development Reservoir Area

The Rumei Hydropower Station is a typical cascade hydropower development project in a plateau area. The dam site is located in an area with complex topography, lithology, and geological structure. Geological disasters are developed in the area, mainly debris flow. Thus, taking the dam site and the surrounding areas as key evaluation objects, the engineering geological characteristics, geological environment characteristics, and the susceptibility and risk of geological disasters that may be caused are predicted and evaluated. The main methods used in this assessment are the binary logistic regression model and expert evaluation. The results show that the susceptibility to geological disasters is small and medium. The results of this study could provide a scientific basis for the rationality of the general layout and site selection of the project construction in the plateau water elevator level development reservoir area.

Incorporating ecosystem services value into the optimal development of hydropower projects

Using an efficient cost-benefit analysis framework and optimization model is essential for the proper planning of hydropower projects. The implementation of hydropower has different effects on the environment, which undermine the delivery of ecosystem services. The change in ecosystem services is often not included in hydropower projects' economic analysis and planning. Understanding the quantity of ecosystem services and their associated economic value is an important step to protection of ecosystems and provides an opportunity to enter ecosystem services into economic relations. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to investigate how to incorporate ecosystem services into project optimization models and decision-making. So, an attempt is made to quantify these environmental effects to develop a comprehensive simulation-optimization model and achieve a more sustainable development of hydropower projects in the system. The costs and benefits from the environmental economy include hydropower advantages and loss of ecosystem services added to the objective function. The results show that considering the environmental affects the NPV and decision variables such as the normal water level and installed capacity. The economic value of negative environmental impacts was more than its advantages and caused about 27% and 14.5% decrease in NPV and energy generation of the HPP project.

The Risks of Hydro-Hegemony: Turkey’s Environmental Policies and Shared Water Resources in the South Caucasus

Abstract The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war intensified the debates about regional integration and political rivalries in the South Caucasus. In the changing geopolitical setting of the region, Turkey’s regional environmental policies contradict its cooperation-based and friendly relations with the regional states. Taking a recent hydropower development project in the Kura-Araks River basin initiated by the government of Turkey as a case study, this study reviews Turkey’s transboundary water management policies in the region in connection with its political ties with the regional countries. This article argues that Turkey uses its relative power in the regional hydropolitical relations by exploiting current and historical issue-linkages and benefit-sharing options, and that the intention to act like a hydro-hegemon in the South Caucasus will negatively impact Turkey’s position in intended regional cooperation schemes and long-established strategic partnerships with the regional countries, especially Azerbaijan and Georgia.

New and Renewable Energy: Ensuring the Hydropower Development Policy Meets the Community and the Environmental Participation Based on the Paris Agreement

Energy demand is rapidly increasing, following population growth and economic trends, including the demand for electrical energy. Indonesia seeks to transition to the use of new and renewable energy to supply its demand for electricity. The national strategic program to construct 65 dams in 2023 is the fundamental foundation for the government’s ability to bring about this massive development. One of the many essential uses of reservoirs is as a source of hydropower energy. However, have been many cases of rejection by local communities that do not consider themselves to have been fairly consulted for or participating in the development process. Another premise of this rejection is founded on environmental issues related to the Paris Agreement. This article focuses on meeting challenges to community and environmental participation based on the Paris Agreement. New and renewable energy policies incorporate novel regulations pertaining to the government’s authority to work on the new renewable energy projects. Hydropower development projects fall under the government’s efforts to switch to new sources of renewable energy. Insufficient involvement of the local community in development and activities, to the extent that the information and comprehension on where the hydropower dams are expected to be built are exceptionally lacking but are also, due to the impact of the development toward the environment, the main source of refusal from the local community. Finally in accordance with the Paris Agreement, insufficient attention toward the landscape will likely impair the ability to create future hydropower development projects.

Estimating the economic impact of large hydropower projects: a dynamic multi-regional computable general equilibrium analysis

AbstractIn response to rapidly growing energy demands, Chinese authorities plan to invest more in hydropower development. However, there are concerns about the possible effects on macroeconomy. This paper uses SinoTERM, a dynamic multi-regional computable general equilibrium model (CGE) of the Chinese economy, to analyze the economic impact of large hydropower development projects. The model features regional labor market dynamics and an electricity subdivision module with substitutability between various types of electricity generation. The results suggest that hydropower development will boost economic growth in the project region. Most sectors in the project region will benefit from the hydropower development such as other services, health, and education, while some sectors will suffer a loss in output because of the substantial increase in real wages. For the national, every 10,000 yuan investment can drive the national GDP growth of 1,000 yuan, and the cost is expected to be recovered in ten years. By the end of 2040, the real national wage will be around 0.16% higher than the baseline scenario. The project could only be justified if net environmental benefits outweigh this loss.

Emergy theory to quantify the sustainability of large cascade hydropower projects in the upper Yangtze

Cascade development of hydropower projects in a river basin can fully enhance the utilization of hydropower resources. Yet, the impacts of cascade hydropower projects on river ecosystems and social-economic systems are not well elaborated. The current research proposed an emergy estimation method to evaluate the environmental sustainability of two large hydropower projects and suggest the reasonable scale of hydropower development at river basin scale. Unlike traditional approach that used a single hydropower project as a system, the method took river reach as a system. The cascade hydropower development in lower Jinsha River, the river reach in the upper Yangtze River in China, were taken as the case study to apply the method. The results shown that at current level of construction and management, the development of Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu are still sustainable but insufficient. And the scale of large hydropower development in the lower reaches of the Jinsha River is suggested to be 29000 MW to 54000 MW. Then the transformity of hydroelectricity would be 9.50E+04seJ/J to 6.85E+04seJ/J. The Emergy sustainability indicator (ESI) decreases with the increasing of development scale, ESI would be 6.5 in the case of current development plan (45200MW), which means a good utilization efficiency and sustainability. However, the on-grid electricity price was suggested to increase to 0.40 CNY/kW•h for the reason that fair price of the electricity is higher than the on-grid electricity price. Such evaluation results could have a greater reference for hydropower planning in river basin. We believed that this approach can help policymakers and stakeholders make more reliable decisions in hydropower planning.

Impacts of Climate Change and Hydropower Development on the Community Livelihoods in Sondu Miriu River Basin, Kenya

Hydropower is sustainable and environmentally friendly source of energy worldwide. Driven by streamflow, it is vulnerable to climate change and land use change. The hydropower production from the two-existing run-of-river hydropower projects on the Sondu Miriu river are vulnerable to rainfall variability and requires proper understanding of the climate change trends and policies to support sustainable hydropower development and put in place strategies for building resilience for the local communities. The main objective of this paper was to examine the impacts of both the climate change and the hydropower development projects on the livelihoods of the community living within the Sondu Miriu River basin. Participatory methodologies involving administration of questionnaires at household level and focus group discussions with the local leaders and actors were applied to determine the impacts of climate change and the hydropower development on the community livelihoods within the basin. The socioeconomic status of the basin indicates that majority of the households (>59%) are poor and earn below 8 US dollars per day. The employment rate is extremely low with only 22% in formal employment. About 49% of the households still use wood fuel and charcoal as energy sources which is a threat to catchment conservation. Strengthening community resilience to climate change impacts is one of the benefits to be derived from the hydropower projects by supporting appropriate adaptation strategies within the existing policy framework.

English

Hydropower is cost effective environment friendly and worldwide proven sustainable energy source. Driven by streamflow stream flows, it is vulnerable to climate change and land use change. The hydropower production from the two-existing run-of-river hydropower projects on the Sondu Miriu River are vulnerable to rainfall variability and requires proper understanding of the climate change trends and policies to support sustainable hydropower development and put in place strategies for building resilience for the local communities. The objective of this paper is to examine climate change trends and their impacts on hydropower in the Sondu Miriu River basin. The methodology involved analysis of downscaled climate data from CORDEX for the period from 1950 to 2100, gridded data from Kenya Meteorological department for a period of 2007 to 2018, river flows data from Water Resources Authority for a period of 2007 to 2018 and hydropower output data from KenGen for a period of 2007 to 2018 to examine the climate change trends within the Sondu Miriu River basin and impacts on hydrology and hydropower. The results indicate that maximum and minimum annual temperature increased by 0.7 and 0.9°C, respectively between 1950 and 2005. Both the maximum and minimum annual temperatures are projected to increase by 1.9°C based on the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios between 2006 and 2100 within the Sondu Miriu basin. Annual rainfall increased by 74.8 mm between 1950 and 2005. This is projected to increase by 24.7 and 117.8 mm based on RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. For the period between 2007 and 2018, the observed maximum increased by 5°C while the minimum temperatures decreased by 1°C. The rainfall decreased by 193.14 mm while the mean daily river flows decreased by 0.3 m3/s annually during the same period. This resulted in the decrease of hydropower production by 8.3 GWh in Sondu Miriu HPP between 2007 and 2018 while the production reduced by 14.18 GWh for Sang’oro HPP between 2012 and 2018. Understanding climate change trends within Sondu Miriu River basin should guide the planning for hydropower development projects.   Key words: Climate change, hydropower, Sondu Miriu River basin, downscaling, impacts.

Estimation of CO2 emission in reservoir coupling floating chamber and thin boundary layer methods

With the growing development of hydropower projects all over the world, the excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from increasing reservoirs have drawn public concern. While precise evaluations of GHG emissions are urgently needed, the widely applied methods including floating chamber (FC) method and thin boundary layer (TBL) method are unsatisfactory. In this paper, a new methodology of estimating CO2 emission coupling FC and TBL methods was proposed. Three efforts were achieved stepwise:1) the CO2 transfer coefficient was determined combining the measurements of FC method and TBL model; 2) a semi-empirical model connecting gas-water transfer coefficient and near-surface water turbulence in reservoir was proposed; 3) finally, since surface turbulence in the reservoir could be describe in detail by numerical simulation, integration thousands of discrete cells of local fluxes could be applied to estimate the total CO2 emission with an improved precision. Nine locations in Xiangjiaba Reservoir were selected as a demo study for applying the method, the CO2 emission in the whole reservoir was about 1.37 kg/s. With a deeper insight into the law of gas transfer and an elaborate consideration of the whole reservoir, this study is expected to provide a new approach and technical support to estimate the CO2 emissions accurately in reservoirs.

Estimating the economic impact of large hydropower projects: a dynamic multi-regional computable general equilibrium analysis

Abstract In response to rapidly growing energy demands, Chinese authorities plan to invest more in hydropower development. However, there are concerns about the possible effects on macroeconomy. This paper uses SinoTERM, a dynamic multi-regional computable general equilibrium model (CGE) of the Chinese economy, to analyze the economic impact of large hydropower development projects. The model features regional labor market dynamics and an electricity subdivision module with substitutability between various types of electricity generation. The results suggest that hydropower development will boost economic growth in the project region. Most sectors in the project region will benefit from the hydropower development such as other services, health, and education, while some sectors will suffer a loss in output because of the substantial increase in real wages. For the national, every 10,000 yuan investment can drive the national GDP growth of 1,000 yuan, and the cost is expected to be recovered in ten years. By the end of 2040, the real national wage will be around 0.16% higher than the baseline scenario. The project could only be justified if net environmental benefits outweigh this loss.

A self-confidence and leadership based feedback mechanism for consensus of group decision making with probabilistic linguistic preference relation

There are usually multiple stakeholders involved in a group decision-making (GDM) problem. The probabilistic linguistic preference relation (PLPR) is an effective tool to describe the preference of each stakeholder. The probability distribution of linguistic preference can be available from statistics analysis on the questionnaires. In GDM process, the essential step is to execute the consensus reaching process (CRP) that is a dynamic iterative process by utilizing the feedback mechanism to update the preference of identified stakeholders. However, the existing feedback mechanisms with the fixed boundary parameter neglect the individual psychological behavior, leading to false CRP. For which, the personalized feedback mechanism based on self-confidence and leadership is developed to generate recommendation advice for the identified stakeholders, which is the three-step procedure: (1) construct trust relationship network and obtain trust degree among stakeholders; (2) assess individual self-confidence level from professional ability and sociability that are captured by entropy and trust degree, respectively, and (3) identify the opinion leader as reference preference. Furthermore, we analyze the convergence and consistency of identified stakeholders after adopting the feedback recommendation. Then, an example of hydropower development project assessments is illustrated to show the feasibility of the proposed method. Finally, by comparison and analysis with other consensus models, it demonstrates the advantages of the proposed feedback mechanism.

Ranking of hydropower projects based on sustainability criteria in India using multicriteria decision making methods

Assessment of hydropower projects with respect to sustainability criteria is a multidimensional and a complex issue that decision makers usually face during planning process. In hydropower projects, it is important to consider technical, environmental and social parameters instead of purely economic ones for sustainability assessment and decision making. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods offer a practical approach to a problem having conflicting criteria. The flexibility to consider several criteria and objectives simultaneously made MCDM methods well accepted in the field of energy planning. This paper aims for applicability of MCDM methods which will facilitate the decision makers to select the most sustainable hydropower projects by making real and logical choices based on various sustainability criteria. For comprehensively rank hydropower projects of Indian region based on sustainability criteria four MCDM methods are applied i.e., analytic hierarchy process (AHP), technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE II) and elimination and choice translating reality (ELECTRE III). To ensure better decision making the eight criteria selected are compatible to the sustainable development of hydropower projects.