HYDROPOWER EUROPE: Avoiding potential pollution through innovation

On the 8th of June 2021, over 70 of the almost 100 registered attendees joined the experts in a roundtable discussion on the topic “Hydropower: how to avoid potential pollution sources and to mitigate environmental impacts by innovative measures and concepts” to shed light on good practice that should serve as the basic standard for hydropower deployment.

The keynote speech presented concrete examples of how to manage potential sources of pollution and potential environmental impacts during the life cycle of a hydropower plant. The presentation is available here (after the registration).

The roundtable discussion was centralised around the topic of how innovation can eliminate and reduce the sources of pollution and impacts. The outcomes provided a rich source of ideas and suggestions for the HYDROPOWER EUROPE Forum to consider whilst finalising their main documents, which comprise the Research and Innovation Agenda and Strategic Industry Roadmap for hydropower in Europe.

Main takeaways

Hydro as a support to the energy system

The role of hydro should be to provide support to the energy system rather than as a mass supplier. New projects are required in many countries to mitigate climate change impacts. Today, large projects are performed according to the highest standards as was also shown by Claire Descourtieux in her keynote presentation.

Hydro is perceived as without pollution
Hydro is perceived without pollution but with environmental impacts. Due to a lack of awareness, hydro is perceived as ‘established’, ‘old tech’, not something that is alive, innovating and evolving. Even though advanced techniques and innovative designs are often implemented in new hydropower projects, the results and success stories of these new projects are not communicated enough. For instance, ecological design is implemented in green field or refurbishing projects, to properly anticipate the potential environmental and social impacts early in the project design stage, avoid or minimize them and, when necessary, compensate them. Circularity and sustainability have been implemented thanks to refined methodologies (Strategic Environment Assessment, UN Guides, CBI’s criteria, EU taxonomy, HSAP, IHA protocol, ESG tools,…) including lifetime cycle analyses.

Law and regulation enforcement is needed

In the Balkans, a mixture of a failure with law and regulation enforcement with the cause of the damage is reported for hydro. In many countries, small hydropower projects don’t need rigorous environmental impact assessments and the limit for such is often set at 10 MW which represents projects which already have a high potential impact. The limit for implementing environmental impact assessments should be much lower – for example, at 3 MW or even 1 MW if there is significant flow diversion. This should be a standard set for and demanded by all EU member countries (i.e. also when supporting renewable energy development in countries like the Balkans).

R&I on impact issues

Even though there seem to be a lot of R&I actions focusing on impact issues with hydro, it is unclear how effective these solutions are nor how aware of these solutions people are. Only R&I which finds its way into practice is successful. R&I solutions arise best from cross-disciplinary interaction. Amongst other solutions, the innovative shaft hydropower plant was presented, which is a very low impact small hydro solution for low-grade rivers.

Conclusions

In the concluding remarks, the coordinator of HYDROPOWER EUROPE, Anton Schleiss, highlighted that hydropower fulfils all the conditions to be a catalyst for a successful energy transition in Europe as stated in the vision of the Hydropower Europe Forum.

After supporting the global supply of electricity and water for the last century with clean and renewable energy, hydropower moves to support the development of an increasing share of renewable but variable energy supplies, through environmental innovations.

WATCH THE RECORDING HERE