Planning & projects |
Environmental focus
Various research studies have been focusing on the environmental credentials of hydropower developments worldwide. IWP&DC takes a closer look at methane emissions, sedimentation, and the plight of the platypus
IN THE 21ST CENTURY, reservoir design and management without a long-term sediment management strategy is deemed as being neither sustainable nor engineering best practice. However, such awareness of reservoir sedimentation predates the explosive growth of dam building in 20th century and, as new research by the UN warns, large dams worldwide look set to lose more than a quarter of their storage by 2050. The report, called Present and Future Losses of
Above: Myanmar could meet its total current electricity demand by developing potentially profitable hydropower sites with limited environmental impacts
Storage in Large Reservoirs Due to Sedimentation and published by the journal Sustainability, says that large dams have already lost an estimated 13-19% of their combined original storage capacity as a result of trapped sediment. Worldwide, that number is set to rise to 23-28% by 2050. This global loss from original dam capacity– from ~6300 billion m3 to ~4650 billion m3 – roughly equals the annual water use of India,
in 2050 40 | March 2023 |
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China, Indonesia, France and Canada combined. The UK, Panama, Ireland, Japan and Seychelles will experience the highest water storage losses by 2050 – between 35% and 50% of their original capacities. The five least affected countries of Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guinea, and Niger will lose less than 15% by mid-century. “The decrease in available storage by 2050 in all countries and regions will challenge many aspects of national economies, including irrigation, power generation, and water supply,” said Dr. Duminda Perera, who co-authored the study with UNU-INWEH Director Vladimir Smakhtin and Spencer Williams of McGill University in Montreal. The researchers applied previously-established
storage loss rates worldwide to a subset of nearly 60,000 dams in a database maintained by the International Commission on Large Dams. The subset comprises 47,403 large dams for which original
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