Hydropower sees peril, promise in climate change

TACOMA, Wash. — It’s been likened to a giant bellows or a massive fire hose, sending huge amounts of water roiling and churning between Puget Sound’s southern and northern basins with every change of the tides.

Some entrepreneurs, however, see the mile-wide channel of the Tacoma Narrows as more than a natural wonder. It’s also the next frontier of green energy.
“It’s awe-inspiring,” said Burt Hamner, chief executive of Puget Sound Tidal Power. “There is so much power out there that it boggles the mind.”

Hamner’s firm is part of an emerging industry that hopes to turn the Pacific Northwest’s wind-swept coasts and powerful tidal currents into a bountiful source of electric power.

Their pursuit is one of the big changes on the horizon for the Northwest’s hydropower industry, which faces both peril and promise from the projected effects of climate change.

On one hand, dam operators who helped build the region’s economy face a big worry: that climate change will disrupt runoff cycles, increasing tension between utilities, farmers and fish when the water supply is short.

But proponents of both old and new hydropower technologies see the chance to claim a bigger slice of the nation’s energy plans, as policy-makers look for sources of power free of greenhouse gases.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer