{"id":149527,"date":"2022-11-05T12:23:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T17:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/why-is-hydroelectricity-so-green-and-yet-unfashionable"},"modified":"2022-11-05T12:23:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-05T17:23:51","slug":"why-is-hydroelectricity-so-green-and-yet-unfashionable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/why-is-hydroelectricity-so-green-and-yet-unfashionable","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Hydroelectricity So Green, and Yet Unfashionable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I live in Manitoba<\/strong>, a province of Canada where all but a tiny fraction of electricity is generated from the potential energy of water. Unlike in British Columbia and Quebec, where generation relies on huge dams, our dams on the Nelson River are low, with hydraulic heads of no more than 30 meters, which creates only small reservoirs. Of course, the potential is the product of mass, the gravitational constant, and height, but the dams\u2019 modest height is readily compensated for by a large mass, as the mighty river flowing out of Lake Winnipeg continues its course to Hudson Bay.<\/p>\n

You would think this is about as \u201cgreen\u201d as it can get, but in 2022 that would be a mistake. There is no end of gushing about China\u2019s cheap solar panels\u2014but when was the last time you saw a paean to hydroelectricity?<\/p>\n

Construction of large dams began before World War II. The United States got the Grand Coulee on the Columbia River, the Hoover Dam on the Colorado, and the dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority. After the war, construction of large dams moved to the Soviet Union, Africa, South America (Brazil\u2019s Itaipu, at its completion in 1984 the world\u2019s largest dam, with 14 gigawatts capacity), and Asia, where it culminated in China\u2019s unprecedented effort. China now has three of the world\u2019s six largest hydroelectric stations: Three Gorges, 22.5 GW (the largest in the world); Xiluodu, 13.86 GW; and Wudongde, 10.2 GW. Baihetan on the Jinsha River should soon begin full-scale operation and become the world\u2019s second-largest station (16 GW).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in Manitoba, a province of Canada where all but a tiny fraction of electricity is generated from the potential energy of water. Unlike in British Columbia and Quebec, where generation relies on huge dams, our dams on the Nelson River are low, with hydraulic heads of no more than 30 meters, which creates [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}