Category: <span>Paris worth a dam?</span>

The World Hydropower Day 2024. Obituary in Graphics

Since 2013 hydropower installation decreased 9-fold (this statistics includes any conventional hydropower and does not include pumped storage) Electricity from newly built hydropower in 2023 was 30% more expensive than from photovoltaic solar power, while its construction is 3.7 times more expensive. It is also 70% more expensive than electricity …

As The Hydropower Fails, for Africa the Future is Solar (but some slip into coal)

The Kariba Reservoir on Zambezi River shared by Zimabawe and Zambia has long suffered from the lack of water and threatened to leave population without electricity. It finally happened in 2024, when the biggest reservoir in the world holding 185 cubic kilometers of water, pactically stopped generating any meaningful amount …

Krapivinskaya Hydro – a False Alternative to Coal

As Russian Government is dreaming to restore Soviet Union it seeks to revive most bizarre and harmful infrastructure projects conceived and even partly built during the XX century. Some of those are large dams on still free flowing rivers. Even now, when civil freedoms are suppressed and punished, local activists …

The World Bank Response: Megadams is the New Bretton Woods’ Answer to Climate Change

 In March 2024 17 civil society groups sent an appeal to the World Bank and 10 more international banks and funds urging them to rethink approach to the Rogun Hydro in Tajikistan. After 40 days of silence The World Bank issued a detailed response which, instead of answering specific questions …

International Energy Agency: “Hydropower is particularly sensitive to the cost of capital”

Hydropower issues in the IEA report on “Reducing Cost of Capital” The International Energy Agency issued an interesting report on reducing the cost of capital for “clean energy”, including hydropower. The Rivers without Boundaries considers it a timely publication in the era of rising interest rates, and is happy to …

Hydropower stepped down as the global renewable power champion

A year earlier than it was previously forecasted to happen the installed capacity of solar power plants reached 37% of all global renewable energy, which left hydropower behind with 33%. Renewable Capacity Statistics 2024 released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows that 2023 set a new record in …