China Drought Underlines Hydropower Reliance Risks

A major drought has squeezed electricity output at big dams across southwest China, highlighting the risks of Beijing’s massive hydropower expansion plans on coal and oil markets in a warmer, drier world.

Ships are stranded, millions are short on drinking water, and power supplies to big consumers in several Chinese provinces have been cut back, industry officials and local media have said.
And while building more dams will help Beijing meet more of its electricity demand using resources within its own borders, it also risks short-term surges in consumption of oil, coal or natural gas to generate emergency power when rivers run low.

The world’s number-two energy user already gets 15 percent of its electricity from hydropower and aims to increase capacity by more than half to 190 gigawatts — over double Britain’s entire stock of power plants — by the end of the decade.

But Australia’s similarly ambitious Snowy Hydro power scheme, designed more than half a century ago as a lifeline for the fertile yet dry Murray-Darling river basin, offers a grim warning.

Normally the provider of three quarters of the mainland’s renewable energy, it has seen output tumble and drowned towns re-emerge from shrinking reservoirs after years of poor rains.

“The Australian example shows how risky hydropower is, from the point of view of droughts,” said CLSA analyst Simon Powell.

Planet Ark